Apache HTTP Server Version 2.4
Description: | Server-parsed html documents (Server Side Includes) |
---|---|
Status: | Base |
Module Identifier: | include_module |
Source File: | mod_include.c |
Compatibility: | Implemented as an output filter since Apache 2.0 |
This module provides a filter which will process files before they are sent to the client. The processing is controlled by specially formatted SGML comments, referred to as elements. These elements allow conditional text, the inclusion of other files or programs, as well as the setting and printing of environment variables.
Server Side Includes are implemented by the
INCLUDES
filter. If
documents containing server-side include directives are given
the extension .shtml, the following directives will make Apache
parse them and assign the resulting document the mime type of
text/html
:
AddType text/html .shtml AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .shtml
The following directive must be given for the directories
containing the shtml files (typically in a
<Directory>
section,
but this directive is also valid in .htaccess
files if
AllowOverride
Options
is set):
Options +Includes
For backwards compatibility, the server-parsed
handler also activates the
INCLUDES filter. As well, Apache will activate the INCLUDES
filter for any document with mime type
text/x-server-parsed-html
or
text/x-server-parsed-html3
(and the resulting
output will have the mime type text/html
).
For more information, see our Tutorial on Server Side Includes.
Files processed for server-side includes no longer accept
requests with PATH_INFO
(trailing pathname information)
by default. You can use the AcceptPathInfo
directive to
configure the server to accept requests with PATH_INFO
.
The document is parsed as an HTML document, with special commands embedded as SGML comments. A command has the syntax:
<!--#element attribute=value
attribute=value ... -->
The value will often be enclosed in double quotes, but single
quotes ('
) and backticks (`
) are also
possible. Many commands only allow a single attribute-value pair.
Note that the comment terminator (-->
) should be
preceded by whitespace to ensure that it isn't considered part of
an SSI token. Note that the leading <!--#
is one
token and may not contain any whitespaces.
The allowed elements are listed in the following table:
Element | Description |
---|---|
config |
configure output formats |
echo |
print variables |
exec |
execute external programs |
fsize |
print size of a file |
flastmod |
print last modification time of a file |
include |
include a file |
printenv |
print all available variables |
set |
set a value of a variable |
SSI elements may be defined by modules other than
mod_include
. In fact, the exec
element is provided by
mod_cgi
, and will only be available if this
module is loaded.
This command controls various aspects of the parsing. The valid attributes are:
echomsg
(Apache 2.1 and later)echo
element
attempts to echo an undefined variable. This overrides any SSIUndefinedEcho
directives.errmsg
SSIErrorMsg
directives.sizefmt
bytes
for a count in bytes, or abbrev
for a count
in Kb or Mb as appropriate, for example a size of 1024 bytes
will be printed as "1K".timefmt
strftime(3)
library routine when printing
dates.This command prints one of the include
variables defined below. If the variable is unset, the result is
determined by the SSIUndefinedEcho
directive. Any dates printed are
subject to the currently configured timefmt
.
Attributes:
var
decoding
Specifies whether Apache should strip an encoding from
the variable before processing the variable further. The default
is none
, where no decoding will be done. If set to
url
, then URL decoding (also known as %-encoding;
this is appropriate for use within URLs in links, etc.) will be
performed. If set to urlencoded
,
application/x-www-form-urlencoded compatible encoding (found in
query strings) will be stripped. If set to base64
,
base64 will be decoded, and if set to entity
, HTML
entity encoding will be stripped. Decoding is done prior to any
further encoding on the variable. Multiple encodings can be
stripped by specifying more than one comma separated encoding.
The decoding setting will remain in effect until the next decoding
attribute is encountered, or the element ends.
The decoding
attribute must precede the
corresponding var
attribute to be effective.
encoding
Specifies how Apache should encode special characters
contained in the variable before outputting them. If set
to none
, no encoding will be done. If set to
url
, then URL encoding (also known as %-encoding;
this is appropriate for use within URLs in links, etc.) will be
performed. If set to urlencoded
,
application/x-www-form-urlencoded compatible encoding will be
performed instead, and should be used with query strings. If set
to base64
, base64 encoding will be performed. At
the start of an echo
element, the default is set to
entity
, resulting in entity encoding (which is
appropriate in the context of a block-level HTML element,
e.g. a paragraph of text). This can be changed by adding
an encoding
attribute, which will remain in effect
until the next encoding
attribute is encountered or
the element ends, whichever comes first.
The encoding
attribute must precede the
corresponding var
attribute to be effective.
The exec
command executes a given shell command or
CGI script. It requires mod_cgi
to be present
in the server. If Options
IncludesNOEXEC
is set, this command is completely
disabled. The valid attributes are:
cgi
The value specifies a (%-encoded) URL-path to
the CGI script. If the path does not begin with a slash (/),
then it is taken to be relative to the current
document. The document referenced by this path is
invoked as a CGI script, even if the server would not
normally recognize it as such. However, the directory
containing the script must be enabled for CGI scripts
(with ScriptAlias
or Options
ExecCGI
).
The CGI script is given the PATH_INFO
and query
string (QUERY_STRING
) of the original request from the
client; these cannot be specified in the URL path. The
include variables will be available to the script in addition to
the standard CGI environment.
<!--#exec cgi="/cgi-bin/example.cgi" -->
If the script returns a Location:
header instead of
output, then this will be translated into an HTML anchor.
The include virtual
element should be used in preference to exec cgi
. In
particular, if you need to pass additional arguments to a CGI program,
using the query string, this cannot be done with exec
cgi
, but can be done with include virtual
, as
shown here:
<!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/example.cgi?argument=value" -->
cmd
The server will execute the given string using
/bin/sh
. The include variables are available to the command, in addition
to the usual set of CGI variables.
The use of #include virtual
is almost always prefered to using
either #exec cgi
or #exec cmd
. The former
(#include virtual
) uses the standard Apache sub-request
mechanism to include files or scripts. It is much better tested and
maintained.
In addition, on some platforms, like Win32, and on unix when
using suexec, you cannot pass arguments
to a command in an exec
directive, or otherwise include
spaces in the command. Thus, while the following will work under a
non-suexec configuration on unix, it will not produce the desired
result under Win32, or when running suexec:
<!--#exec cmd="perl /path/to/perlscript arg1 arg2" -->
This command prints the size of the specified file, subject
to the sizefmt
format specification. Attributes:
file
virtual
This command prints the last modification date of the
specified file, subject to the timefmt
format
specification. The attributes are the same as for the
fsize
command.
This command inserts the text of another document or file
into the parsed file. Any included file is subject to the usual
access control. If the directory containing the parsed file has
Options
IncludesNOEXEC
set, then only documents with a text
MIME-type (text/plain
,
text/html
etc.) will be included. Otherwise CGI
scripts are invoked as normal using the complete URL given in
the command, including any query string.
An attribute defines the location of the document, and may appear more than once in an include element; an inclusion is done for each attribute given to the include command in turn. The valid attributes are:
file
../
, nor can it be an absolute path.
Therefore, you cannot include files that are outside of the
document root, or above the current document in the directory
structure. The virtual
attribute should always be
used in preference to this one.virtual
The value is a (%-encoded) URL-path. The URL cannot contain a scheme or hostname, only a path and an optional query string. If it does not begin with a slash (/) then it is taken to be relative to the current document.
A URL is constructed from the attribute, and the output the server would return if the URL were accessed by the client is included in the parsed output. Thus included files can be nested.
If the specified URL is a CGI program, the program will be executed and its output inserted in place of the directive in the parsed file. You may include a query string in a CGI url:
<!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/example.cgi?argument=value" -->
include virtual
should be used in preference
to exec cgi
to include the output of CGI programs
into an HTML document.
If the KeptBodySize
directive is correctly configured and valid for this included
file, attempts to POST requests to the enclosing HTML document
will be passed through to subrequests as POST requests as well.
Without the directive, all subrequests are processed as GET
requests.
onerror
The value is a (%-encoded) URL-path which is shown should a previous attempt to include a file or virtual attribute failed. To be effective, this attribute must be specified after the file or virtual attributes being covered. If the attempt to include the onerror path fails, or if onerror is not specified, the default error message will be included.
# Simple example
<!--#include virtual="/not-exist.html" onerror="/error.html" -->
# Dedicated onerror paths
<!--#include virtual="/path-a.html" onerror="/error-a.html" virtual="/path-b.html" onerror="/error-b.html" -->
This prints out a listing of all existing variables and
their values. Special characters are entity encoded (see the echo
element for details)
before being output. There are no attributes.
<!--#printenv -->
This sets the value of a variable. Attributes:
var
value
decoding
Specifies whether Apache should strip an encoding from
the variable before processing the variable further. The default
is none
, where no decoding will be done. If set to
url
, urlencoded
, base64
or entity
, URL decoding,
application/x-www-form-urlencoded decoding, base64 decoding or HTML
entity decoding will be performed respectively. More than one
decoding can be specified by separating with commas. The decoding
setting will remain in effect until the next decoding attribute
is encountered, or the element ends. The decoding
attribute must precede the corresponding
var
attribute to be effective.
encoding
Specifies how Apache should encode special characters
contained in the variable before setting them. The default is
none
, where no encoding will be done. If set to
url
, urlencoding
, base64
or entity
, URL encoding,
application/x-www-form-urlencoded encoding, base64 encoding or
HTML entity encoding will be performed respectively. More than
one encoding can be specified by separating with commas. The
encoding setting will remain in effect until the next encoding
attribute is encountered, or the element ends. The
encoding
attribute must precede the
corresponding var
attribute to be effective.
Encodings are applied after all decodings have been
stripped.
<!--#set var="category" value="help" -->
In addition to the variables in the standard CGI environment,
these are available for the echo
command, for
if
and elif
, and to any program
invoked by the document.
DATE_GMT
DATE_LOCAL
DOCUMENT_NAME
DOCUMENT_URI
alias
or directoryindex
), the modified
URL is shown.LAST_MODIFIED
QUERY_STRING_UNESCAPED
&
etc. are
preceded by backslashes).Variable substitution is done within quoted strings in most
cases where they may reasonably occur as an argument to an SSI
directive. This includes the config
,
exec
, flastmod
, fsize
,
include
, echo
, and set
directives. If SSILegacyExprParser
is set to on
,
substitution also occures in the arguments to conditional operators.
You can insert a literal dollar sign into the string using backslash
quoting:
<!--#set var="cur" value="\$test" -->
If a variable reference needs to be substituted in the middle of a character sequence that might otherwise be considered a valid identifier in its own right, it can be disambiguated by enclosing the reference in braces, a la shell substitution:
<!--#set var="Zed" value="${REMOTE_HOST}_${REQUEST_METHOD}" -->
This will result in the Zed
variable being set
to "X_Y
" if REMOTE_HOST
is
"X
" and REQUEST_METHOD
is
"Y
".
The basic flow control elements are:
<!--#if expr="test_condition" -->
<!--#elif expr="test_condition" -->
<!--#else -->
<!--#endif -->
The if
element works like an if statement in a
programming language. The test condition is evaluated and if
the result is true, then the text until the next elif
,
else
or endif
element is included in the
output stream.
The elif
or else
statements are used
to put text into the output stream if the original
test_condition was false. These elements are optional.
The endif
element ends the if
element
and is required.
test_condition is a boolean expression tha follows the
ap_expr syntax. The syntax can be changed
to be compatible with Apache HTTPD 2.2.x using SSILegacyExprParser
.
The SSI variables set with the var
element are exported
into the request environment and can be accessed with the
reqenv
function. As a short-cut, the function name
v
is also available inside mod_include
.
The below example will print "from local net" if client IP address belongs to the 10.0.0.0/8 subnet.
<!--#if expr='-R "10.0.0.0/8"' -->
from local net
<!--#else -->
from somewhere else
<!--#endif -->
The below example will print "foo is bar" if the variable
foo
is set to the value "bar".
<!--#if expr='v("foo") = "bar"' -->
foo is bar
<!--#endif -->
See also: Expressions in Apache HTTP Server,
for a complete reference and examples. The restricted functions
are not available inside mod_include
This section describes the syntax of the #if expr
element if SSILegacyExprParser
is set to on
.
string
-A string
true if the URL represented by the string is accessible by configuration, false otherwise. This is useful where content on a page is to be hidden from users who are not authorized to view the URL, such as a link to that URL. Note that the URL is only tested for whether access would be granted, not whether the URL exists.
<!--#if expr="-A /private" -->
Click <a href="/private">here</a> to access private
information.
<!--#endif -->
string1 = string2
string1 == string2
string1 != string2
Compare string1 with string2. If
string2 has the form /string2/
then it is treated as a regular expression. Regular expressions are
implemented by the PCRE engine and
have the same syntax as those in perl
5. Note that ==
is just an alias for =
and behaves exactly the same way.
If you are matching positive (=
or ==
), you
can capture grouped parts of the regular expression. The captured parts
are stored in the special variables $1
..
$9
. The whole string matched by the regular expression is
stored in the special variable $0
<!--#if expr="$QUERY_STRING = /^sid=([a-zA-Z0-9]+)/" -->
<!--#set var="session" value="$1" -->
<!--#endif -->
string1 < string2
string1 <= string2
string1 > string2
string1 >= string2
strcmp(3)
). Therefore the string "100" is less than
"20".( test_condition )
! test_condition
test_condition1 &&
test_condition2
test_condition1 ||
test_condition2
"=
" and "!=
" bind more tightly than
"&&
" and "||
". "!
" binds
most tightly. Thus, the following are equivalent:
<!--#if expr="$a = test1 && $b = test2" -->
<!--#if expr="($a = test1) && ($b = test2)" -->
The boolean operators &&
and ||
share the same priority. So if you want to bind such an operator more
tightly, you should use parentheses.
Anything that's not recognized as a variable or an operator
is treated as a string. Strings can also be quoted:
'string'
. Unquoted strings can't contain whitespace
(blanks and tabs) because it is used to separate tokens such as
variables. If multiple strings are found in a row, they are
concatenated using blanks. So,
string1 string2
results in string1 string2
and
'string1 string2'
results in string1 string2
.
If the expressions become more complex and slow down processing significantly, you can try to optimize them according to the evaluation rules:
&&
and ||
)
are short circuited wherever possible. In conclusion with the rule
above that means, mod_include
evaluates at first
the left expression. If the left result is sufficient to determine
the end result, processing stops here. Otherwise it evaluates the
right side and computes the end result from both left and right
results.$1
.. $9
).If you want to look how a particular expression is handled, you can
recompile mod_include
using the
-DDEBUG_INCLUDE
compiler option. This inserts for every
parsed expression tokenizer information, the parse tree and how it is
evaluated into the output sent to the client.
All slashes which are not intended to act as delimiters in your regex must be escaped. This is regardless of their meaning to the regex engine.
Description: | String that ends an include element |
---|---|
Syntax: | SSIEndTag tag |
Default: | SSIEndTag "-->" |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_include |
Compatibility: | Available in version 2.0.30 and later. |
This directive changes the string that mod_include
looks for to mark the end of an include element.
SSIEndTag "%>"
Description: | Error message displayed when there is an SSI error |
---|---|
Syntax: | SSIErrorMsg message |
Default: | SSIErrorMsg "[an error occurred while processing this
directive]" |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | All |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_include |
Compatibility: | Available in version 2.0.30 and later. |
The SSIErrorMsg
directive changes the error
message displayed when mod_include
encounters an
error. For production servers you may consider changing the default
error message to "<!-- Error -->"
so that
the message is not presented to the user.
This directive has the same effect as the <!--#config
errmsg=message -->
element.
SSIErrorMsg "<!-- Error -->"
Description: | Controls whether ETags are generated by the server. |
---|---|
Syntax: | SSIETag on|off |
Default: | SSIETag off |
Context: | directory, .htaccess |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_include |
Compatibility: | Available in version 2.2.15 and later. |
Under normal circumstances, a file filtered by mod_include
may contain elements that are either dynamically generated, or that may
have changed independently of the original file. As a result, by default
the server is asked not to generate an ETag
header for the
response by adding no-etag
to the request notes.
The SSIETag
directive suppresses this
behaviour, and allows the server to generate an ETag
header.
This can be used to enable caching of the output. Note that a backend server
or dynamic content generator may generate an ETag of its own, ignoring
no-etag
, and this ETag will be passed by
mod_include
regardless of the value of this setting.
SSIETag
can take on the following values:
off
no-etag
will be added to the request notes, and the server
is asked not to generate an ETag. Where a server ignores the value of
no-etag
and generates an ETag anyway, the ETag will be
respected.on
Description: | Controls whether Last-Modified headers are generated by the
server. |
---|---|
Syntax: | SSILastModified on|off |
Default: | SSILastModified off |
Context: | directory, .htaccess |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_include |
Compatibility: | Available in version 2.2.15 and later. |
Under normal circumstances, a file filtered by mod_include
may contain elements that are either dynamically generated, or that may
have changed independently of the original file. As a result, by default
the Last-Modified
header is stripped from the response.
The SSILastModified
directive overrides this
behaviour, and allows the Last-Modified
header to be respected
if already present, or set if the header is not already present. This can
be used to enable caching of the output. SSILastModified
can take on the following values:
off
Last-Modified
header will be stripped from responses,
unless the XBitHack
directive
is set to full
as described below.on
Last-Modified
header will be respected if already
present in a response, and added to the response if the response is a
file and the header is missing. The
SSILastModified
directive
takes precedence over XBitHack
.Description: | Enable compatibility mode for conditional expressions. |
---|---|
Syntax: | SSILegacyExprParser on|off |
Default: | SSILegacyExprParser off |
Context: | directory, .htaccess |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_include |
Compatibility: | Available in version 2.3.13 and later. |
As of version 2.3.13, mod_include
has switched to the
new ap_expr syntax for conditional expressions
in #if
flow control elements. This directive allows to
switch to the old syntax which is compatible
with Apache HTTPD version 2.2.x and earlier.
Description: | String that starts an include element |
---|---|
Syntax: | SSIStartTag tag |
Default: | SSIStartTag "<!--#" |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_include |
Compatibility: | Available in version 2.0.30 and later. |
This directive changes the string that mod_include
looks for to mark an include element to process.
You may want to use this option if you have 2 servers parsing the output of a file each processing different commands (possibly at different times).
SSIStartTag "<%"
SSIEndTag "%>"
The example given above, which also specifies a matching
SSIEndTag
, will
allow you to use SSI directives as shown in the example
below:
<%printenv %>
Description: | Configures the format in which date strings are displayed |
---|---|
Syntax: | SSITimeFormat formatstring |
Default: | SSITimeFormat "%A, %d-%b-%Y %H:%M:%S %Z" |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | All |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_include |
Compatibility: | Available in version 2.0.30 and later. |
This directive changes the format in which date strings are displayed
when echoing DATE
environment variables. The
formatstring is as in strftime(3)
from the
C standard library.
This directive has the same effect as the <!--#config
timefmt=formatstring -->
element.
SSITimeFormat "%R, %B %d, %Y"
The above directive would cause times to be displayed in the format "22:26, June 14, 2002".
Description: | String displayed when an unset variable is echoed |
---|---|
Syntax: | SSIUndefinedEcho string |
Default: | SSIUndefinedEcho "(none)" |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | All |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_include |
Compatibility: | Available in version 2.0.34 and later. |
This directive changes the string that mod_include
displays when a variable is not set and "echoed".
SSIUndefinedEcho "<!-- undef -->"
Description: | Parse SSI directives in files with the execute bit set |
---|---|
Syntax: | XBitHack on|off|full |
Default: | XBitHack off |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Options |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_include |
The XBitHack
directive controls the parsing
of ordinary html documents. This directive only affects files associated
with the MIME-type text/html
. XBitHack
can take on the following values:
off
on
text/html
file that has the user-execute bit
set will be treated as a server-parsed html document.full
on
but also test the group-execute bit.
If it is set, then set the Last-modified
date of the
returned file to be the last modified time of the file. If
it is not set, then no last-modified date is sent. Setting
this bit allows clients and proxies to cache the result of
the request.
You would not want to use the full option, unless you assure the
group-execute bit is unset for every SSI script which might #include
a CGI or otherwise produces different output on
each hit (or could potentially change on subsequent requests).
The SSILastModified
directive takes precedence over the
XBitHack
directive when
SSILastModified
is set to
on
.