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Using Server-Side Includes (SSI)
A server-side include (SSI, for short) is a command to the web
server embedded in the HTML. SSIs allow the creation of semi-dynamic
web pages without the hassle of writing and maintaining of CGI
scripts. Below are a few simple and useful SSI examples that you can
use on your personal web page. If you'd like more advanced uses of
SSIs, visit Apache's web site and
read through their server documentation on
SSIs.
NOTE: This document is provided as-is by Texas.Net. SSIs are in no
way supported by technical support or the Texas.Net helpdesk.
Because SSIs require that the server be configured to parse through
.html files, the ability to use SSIs may be removed at any time without
warning.
Basics Of SSIs
Before we get to the examples, it'd be first helpful to know what an
SSI looks like. SSIs always take the form:
<!--#element attribute=value -->
When they appear in your code, they are completely replaced by whatever
the server outputs (whether it be text from another HTML page or output
from code or the result of a variable evaluation), so you won't be able
to tell if their in your source code simply by viewing that code from
your browser. When an SSI fails, you will see the line:
error processing this directive
Sometimes, however, it may be hidden, especially if the output was
supposed to generate part of a table, in which case, nothing would
appear. The important thing to remember when using SSIs is that
they must all be one line. You can't have line breaks
separating the various portions of an SSI or it will simply be
outputted to the browser that way (they won't appear in the browser
though because they look like comments).
Displaying the "Last Modified" Date
To let your viewers know the last time you updated your web page, you
can have the server print out the LAST_MODIFIED server
variable. For example, this document was last updated
Thursday, 03-Jun-2004 16:36:28 CDT. The line of HTML that produced this value
is:
<!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED" -->
You can put this line anywhere, although most people usually put this in the header or footer of the document. It's great for letting people know when you've last updated your web page.
A Consistent Look
When designing a site of many pages, you might want to make them all
look alike, with a common opening header or some such. The Lonestar
site is like this, where each page in a section has the same general
look and feel of the other pages in that section. Rather than writing
the same 70-100 lines of HTML code for the beginning of each page, we
create a single document with a generic name like TOP.html
and then use that document in all of our web pages with a line like:
<!--#include virtual="TOP.html" -->
This line will take the text from TOP.html and insert it
wherever that SSI appears in our code, effectively transferring that
entire block of HTML into our web page. With this, you can quickly
create a site of numerous pages having, possibly, the same complex
interface without hours of complex coding per page.
Variable Interpolation
In addition to LAST_MODIFIED, you can print out other
variable values that Apache provides (DATE_GMT,
DATE_LOCAL, DOCUMENT_NAME, and
DOCUMENT_URI) as well as all of the environment variables
and their values. Listed below are the environment variables and their
current values.
Variable |
Value |
DATE_GMT |
Friday, 13-Dec-2019 04:39:17 GMT |
DATE_LOCAL |
Thursday, 12-Dec-2019 22:39:17 CST |
DOCUMENT_NAME |
www_ssi.html |
DOCUMENT_PATH_INFO |
|
DOCUMENT_ROOT |
/web/lonestar/htdocs/home |
DOCUMENT_URI |
/helpdesk/www_ssi.html |
GATEWAY_INTERFACE |
CGI/1.1 |
HTTP_ACCEPT |
text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 |
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING |
gzip |
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE |
en-US,en;q=0.5 |
HTTP_CONNECTION |
Keep-Alive |
HTTP_HOST |
lonestar.texas.net |
HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE |
Tue, 22 Oct 2019 13:34:18 GMT |
HTTP_USER_AGENT |
CCBot/2.0 (https://commoncrawl.org/faq/) |
LAST_MODIFIED |
Thursday, 03-Jun-2004 16:36:28 CDT |
PATH |
/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/usr/ucb:/usr/openwin/bin:/usr/opt/SUNWmd/sbin:/usr/proc/bin:/usr/opt/hpnp/bin:/usr/local/ssl/bin:/web/shared/ssl/ssl/bin |
QUERY_STRING |
|
REMOTE_ADDR |
3.94.129.211 |
REMOTE_HOST |
ec2-3-94-129-211.compute-1.amazonaws.com |
REMOTE_PORT |
42658 |
REQUEST_METHOD |
GET |
REQUEST_URI |
/helpdesk/www_ssi.html |
SCRIPT_FILENAME |
/web/lonestar/cgi-bin/cgivars.pl |
SCRIPT_NAME |
/cgi-bin/cgivars.pl |
SCRIPT_URI |
http://lonestar.texas.net/helpdesk/www_ssi.html |
SCRIPT_URL |
/helpdesk/www_ssi.html |
SERVER_ADDR |
209.99.127.3 |
SERVER_ADMIN |
helpdesk@texas.net |
SERVER_NAME |
lonestar.texas.net |
SERVER_PORT |
80 |
SERVER_PROTOCOL |
INCLUDED |
SERVER_SIGNATURE |
|
SERVER_SOFTWARE |
Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) FrontPage/4.0.4.3 mod_perl/1.27 |
TZ |
US/Central |
USER_NAME |
user#5888 |
Again, SSIs are not supported by Texas.Net. They are currently
functioning due to our web server setup and may become inoperable at
any time.
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