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Specification

The PURL (Package-URL) specification has been standardized with ECMA-427 1st Edition.

ECMA-427 2nd Edition has been approved by Ecma TC54 and is pending approval by the Ecma General Assembly in December 2026.

The Release Notes for ECMA-427 2nd Edition explain the major changes.

See also PURL test schema v0.2 changes for details about the related PURL Test Schema changes.

The content of ECMA-427 is a subset of the overall PURL specification but its content defines the normative standard. Some elements of the specification that are not currently included in ECMA-427 are the How-to guides, the PURL Test Schema, the PURL test suite, and the data for registered PURL Type definitions.

A reference to the "PURL standard" is always a reference to ECMA-427. A reference to the "PURL specification" may refer to information from ECMA-427 or from the broader PURL specification which is maintained in the purl-spec repository on GitHub.

This PURL section of the website includes the following documentation that is not currently included in ECMA-427:

  • How to build a PURL: Instructions for building a PURL.
  • How to parse a PURL: Instructions for parsing a PURL.
  • Tests: Overview and details for the PURL test suite.