Hey,
Good morning. Please find attached my patch for "docs/manual/howto/ssi"
This has been patched against the trunk branch, but as far as I can see
it can be back ported all the way to 1.3, as little if anything has
changed in the way of content.
Happy reading, it is rather an extensive set of changes.
I'm not so sure of the protocol here, so if I need to add the .html.en
file as well (possibly for easier review) then let me know.
Rich, sorry for hacking away at it so much :)
--
Tony
Index: ssi.xml
===================================================================
--- ssi.xml (revision 541441)
+++ ssi.xml (working copy)
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
+<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<!DOCTYPE manualpage SYSTEM "../style/manualpage.dtd">
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="../style/manual.en.xsl"?>
<!-- $LastChangedRevision$ -->
@@ -47,14 +47,14 @@
</directivelist>
</related>
- <p>This article deals with Server Side Includes, usually called
- simply SSI. In this article, I'll talk about configuring your
+ <p>This article deals with Server Side Includes, usually referred to
+ as SSI. In this article, you'll learn how to configure your
server to permit SSI, and introduce some basic SSI techniques
for adding dynamic content to your existing HTML pages.</p>
- <p>In the latter part of the article, we'll talk about some of
- the somewhat more advanced things that can be done with SSI,
- such as conditional statements in your SSI directives.</p>
+ <p>In the latter part of the article, you will see how you can
+ use some of the more advanced features within SSI, such as conditional
+ statements in your directives.</p>
</section>
@@ -62,17 +62,16 @@
<p>SSI (Server Side Includes) are directives that are placed in
HTML pages, and evaluated on the server while the pages are
- being served. They let you add dynamically generated content to
- an existing HTML page, without having to serve the entire page
+ being served. They give you the ability to add dynamically generated
+ content to an existing HTML page, without having to serve the entire page
via a CGI program, or other dynamic technology.</p>
- <p>The decision of when to use SSI, and when to have your page
- entirely generated by some program, is usually a matter of how
+ <p>The decision of when to use SSI, is usually a matter of how
much of the page is static, and how much needs to be
recalculated every time the page is served. SSI is a great way
to add small pieces of information, such as the current time.
But if a majority of your page is being generated at the time
- that it is served, you need to look for some other
+ that it is served, you may want to look for some other
solution.</p>
</section>
@@ -93,19 +92,25 @@
<code>Options</code> to the specific directory where you want SSI
enabled in order to assure that it gets evaluated last.</p>
- <p>Not just any file is parsed for SSI directives. You have to
+ <p>Not every file is parsed for SSI directives. You have to
tell Apache which files should be parsed. There are two ways to
- do this. You can tell Apache to parse any file with a
+ do this. You can either tell Apache to parse any file with a
particular file extension, such as <code>.shtml</code>, with
the following directives:</p>
<example>
AddType text/html .shtml<br />
- AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .shtml
+ AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .shtml<br />
+ ...<br />
+ <Directory /var/www/html><br />
+ Order allow,deny <br />
+ Allow from all <br />
+ Options +Includes <br />
+ </Directory>
</example>
<p>One disadvantage to this approach is that if you wanted to
- add SSI directives to an existing page, you would have to
- change the name of that page, and all links to that page, in
+ add SSI directives to any existing pages, you would have to
+ change the name of those pages, and all links to them, in
order to give it a <code>.shtml</code> extension, so that those
directives would be executed.</p>
@@ -122,25 +127,24 @@
the file name, you would just need to make the file executable
using <code>chmod</code>.</p>
<example>
- chmod +x pagename.html
+ chmod +x example.html
</example>
- <p>A brief comment about what not to do. You'll occasionally
- see people recommending that you just tell Apache to parse all
+ <p>You might occasionally see people recommending that you just tell
Apache to parse all
<code>.html</code> files for SSI, so that you don't have to
mess with <code>.shtml</code> file names. These folks have
- perhaps not heard about <directive
+ perhaps not heard about the <directive
module="mod_include">XBitHack</directive>. The thing to
keep in mind is that, by doing this, you're requiring that
- Apache read through every single file that it sends out to
+ Apache read through every single <code>.html</code> file that it sends out
to
clients, even if they don't contain any SSI directives. This
- can slow things down quite a bit, and is not a good idea.</p>
+ can slow things down quite a bit, and is generally considered bad
practice.</p>
- <p>Of course, on Windows, there is no such thing as an execute
- bit to set, so that limits your options a little.</p>
+ <p>On Windows however, there is no such thing as an execute
+ bit, so that means you can only use the first method.</p>
<p>In its default configuration, Apache does not send the last
- modified date or content length HTTP headers on SSI pages,
+ modified date or content length HTTP headers for SSI pages. This is
because these values are difficult to calculate for dynamic
content. This can prevent your document from being cached, and
result in slower perceived client performance. There are two
@@ -166,24 +170,19 @@
<!--#element attribute=value attribute=value ... -->
</example>
- <p>It is formatted like an HTML comment, so if you don't have
+ <p>SSI directives are formatted like HTML comments, so if you don't have
SSI correctly enabled, the browser will ignore it, but it will
still be visible in the HTML source. If you have SSI correctly
configured, the directive will be replaced with its
results.</p>
- <p>The element can be one of a number of things, and we'll talk
- some more about most of these in the next installment of this
- series. For now, here are some examples of what you can do with
- SSI</p>
-
<section id="todaysdate"><title>Today's date</title>
<example>
<!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL" -->
</example>
- <p>The <code>echo</code> element just spits out the value of a
+ <p>The <code>echo</code> element just returns the value of a
variable. There are a number of standard variables, which
include the whole set of environment variables that are
available to CGI programs. Also, you can define your own
@@ -191,7 +190,7 @@
<p>If you don't like the format in which the date gets printed,
you can use the <code>config</code> element, with a
- <code>timefmt</code> attribute, to modify that formatting.</p>
+ <code>timefmt</code> attribute, to modify the formatting.</p>
<example>
<!--#config timefmt="%A %B %d, %Y" --><br />
@@ -225,13 +224,13 @@
<section id="additionalexamples">
<title>Additional examples</title>
- <p>Following are some specific examples of things you can do in
- your HTML documents with SSI.</p>
+ <p>The following are some specific examples of things you can do with SSI
in
+ your HTML documents.</p>
<section id="docmodified"><title>When was this document
modified?</title>
- <p>Earlier, we mentioned that you could use SSI to inform the
+ <p>Earlier, you were shown that you could use SSI to inform the
user when the document was most recently modified. However, the
actual method for doing that was left somewhat in question. The
following code, placed in your HTML document, will put such a
@@ -253,17 +252,17 @@
This file last modified <!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED" -->
</example>
- <p>For more details on the <code>timefmt</code> format, go to
- your favorite search site and look for <code>strftime</code>. The
+ <p>For more details on the <code>timefmt</code> format, use
+ your favorite search engine and look for <code>strftime</code>. The
syntax is the same.</p>
</section>
<section id="standard-footer">
<title>Including a standard footer</title>
- <p>If you are managing any site that is more than a few pages,
- you may find that making changes to all those pages can be a
- real pain, particularly if you are trying to maintain some kind
+ <p>If you're managing any sites that are more than a few pages,
+ you may find that making changes to all those pages can be quite
cumbersome,
+ particularly if you are trying to maintain some kind
of standard look across all those pages.</p>
<p>Using an include file for a header and/or a footer can
@@ -276,27 +275,28 @@
<em>relative to the current directory</em>. That means that it
cannot be an absolute file path (starting with /), nor can it
contain ../ as part of that path. The <code>virtual</code>
- attribute is probably more useful, and should specify a URL
+ attribute is probably the more useful, and should specify a URL
relative to the document being served. It can start with a /,
- but must be on the same server as the file being served.</p>
+ but this must be on the same server as the file being served.</p>
<example>
<!--#include virtual="/footer.html" -->
</example>
- <p>I'll frequently combine the last two things, putting a
- <code>LAST_MODIFIED</code> directive inside a footer file to be
- included. SSI directives can be contained in the included file,
- and includes can be nested - that is, the included file can
- include another file, and so on.</p>
+ <p>You may decide that you want both the footer, and the
+ <code>LAST_MODIFIED</code> time combined, at the bottom of each page.
+ This can be done by adding the <code>LAST_MODIFIED</code> directive inside
a
+ footer file to be included. SSI directives can be contained
+ in the included file, and includes can be nested - that is,
+ the included file can include another file, and so on.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section id="config">
-<title>What else can I config?</title>
+<title>What else can I configure?</title>
- <p>In addition to being able to <code>config</code> the time
- format, you can also <code>config</code> two other things.</p>
+ <p>In addition to being able to modify the time
+ format, you can also modify two other things.</p>
<p>Usually, when something goes wrong with your SSI directive,
you get the message</p>
@@ -313,7 +313,7 @@
<p>Hopefully, end users will never see this message, because
you will have resolved all the problems with your SSI
- directives before your site goes live. (Right?)</p>
+ directives before your site goes live.</p>
<p>And you can <code>config</code> the format in which file
sizes are returned with the <code>sizefmt</code> attribute. You
@@ -325,9 +325,7 @@
<section id="exec">
<title>Executing commands</title>
- <p>I expect that I'll have an article some time in the coming
- months about using SSI with small CGI programs. For now, here's
- something else that you can do with the <code>exec</code>
+ <p>Here's something else that you can do with the <code>exec</code>
element. You can actually have SSI execute a command using the
shell (<code>/bin/sh</code>, to be precise - or the DOS shell,
if you're on Win32). The following, for example, will give you
@@ -355,41 +353,40 @@
<code>exec</code> tag. If you have any situation where users
can edit content on your web pages, such as with a
``guestbook'', for example, make sure that you have this
- feature disabled. You can allow SSI, but not the
+ feature disabled. You can allow SSI, whilst disabling the
<code>exec</code> feature, with the <code>IncludesNOEXEC</code>
argument to the <code>Options</code> directive.</p>
- </section>
+
+<example>
+ <Directory /var/www/html><br />
+ Order allow,deny <br />
+ Allow from all <br />
+ Options IncludesNOEXEC <br />
+ </Directory>
+</example>
+</section>
+
<section id="advanced">
<title>Advanced SSI techniques</title>
- <p>In addition to spitting out content, Apache SSI gives you
+ <p>In addition to returning the values of variables, Apache SSI gives you
the option of setting variables, and using those variables in
comparisons and conditionals.</p>
-<section id="caveat"><title>Caveat</title>
-
- <p>Most of the features discussed in this article are only
- available to you if you are running Apache 1.2 or later. Of
- course, if you are not running Apache 1.2 or later, you need to
- upgrade immediately, if not sooner. Go on. Do it now. We'll
- wait.</p>
-</section>
-
<section id="variables"><title>Setting variables</title>
<p>Using the <code>set</code> directive, you can set variables
- for later use. We'll need this later in the discussion, so
+ for later use. You'll need this later in the discussion, so
we'll talk about it here. The syntax of this is as follows:</p>
<example>
- <!--#set var="name" value="Rich" -->
+ <!--#set var="name" value="foo" -->
</example>
<p>In addition to merely setting values literally like that, you
- can use any other variable, including <a
- href="../env.html">environment variables</a> or the variables
+ can use any other variable, including the variables
discussed above (like <code>LAST_MODIFIED</code>, for example) to
- give values to your variables. You will specify that something is
+ give values to your variables. You specify that something is
a variable, rather than a literal string, by using the dollar sign
($) before the name of the variable.</p>
@@ -407,9 +404,7 @@
longer string, and there's a chance that the name of the
variable will run up against some other characters, and thus be
confused with those characters, you can place the name of the
- variable in braces, to remove this confusion. (It's hard to
- come up with a really good example of this, but hopefully
- you'll get the point.)</p>
+ variable in braces, to remove this confusion.</p>
<example>
<!--#set var="date" value="${DATE_LOCAL}_${DATE_GMT}" -->
</example>
@@ -418,8 +413,8 @@
<section id="conditional">
<title>Conditional expressions</title>
- <p>Now that we have variables, and are able to set and compare
- their values, we can use them to express conditionals. This
+ <p>Now that you're are able to set and compare
+ variables and their values, you can use them to express conditionals. This
lets SSI be a tiny programming language of sorts.
<module>mod_include</module> provides an <code>if</code>,
<code>elif</code>, <code>else</code>, <code>endif</code>
@@ -440,7 +435,7 @@
the ``truth'' of a particular value. (A given string is true if
it is nonempty.) For a full list of the comparison operators
available to you, see the <module>mod_include</module>
- documentation. Here are some examples of how one might use this
+ documentation. Here are some examples of how you might use this
construct.</p>
<p>In your configuration file, you could put the following
@@ -458,23 +453,18 @@
following:</p>
<example>
<!--#if expr="${Mac} && ${InternetExplorer}" --><br />
- Apologetic text goes here<br />
+ Text string 1 goes here<br />
<!--#else --><br />
- Cool JavaScript code goes here<br />
+ Text string 2 goes here<br />
<!--#endif -->
</example>
- <p>Not that I have anything against IE on Macs - I just
- struggled for a few hours last week trying to get some
- JavaScript working on IE on a Mac, when it was working
- everywhere else. The above was the interim workaround.</p>
-
<p>Any other variable (either ones that you define, or normal
environment variables) can be used in conditional statements.
With Apache's ability to set environment variables with the
<code>SetEnvIf</code> directives, and other related directives,
- this functionality can let you do some pretty involved dynamic
- stuff without ever resorting to CGI.</p>
+ this functionality will enable you to do some pretty clever dynamic
+ stuff without the need for CGI.</p>
</section>
</section>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
