apache tutorial - How to use Server-Side Includes (SSI) Apache - apache - apache web server - apache server - apache2
- You can use Server-Side Includes to add dynamic content to web pages, reuse HTML code, and more.
- As the name "Server-Side Includes" implies, content is generated on the server, whereas client-side technologies (such as JavaScript) generate content on users' computers.
Enabling server-side includes
- On our shared servers, Server-Side Includes are enabled by default for files that have a .shtml extension.
- However, you may want to use Server-Side Includes with other types of files, such as .html or .htm files.
- To do this, create an .htaccess file in your account's document root (public_html) directory, or in the subdirectory where you want to use Server-Side Includes.
- Add the following text to the .htaccess file:
Options +Includes
AddType text/html .html
AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .html
AddType text/html .htm
AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .htmclick below button to copy the code. By Apache tutorial team
- These directives demonstrate how to enable Server-Side Includes for files that have a .html or .htm extension, but you can easily add other file extension types as well.
Using server-side includes
- You can use Apache Server-Side Includes in a variety of scenarios.
Displaying a page modification timestamp
- One of the most common visible uses of SSI is displaying when a page was last modified.
- The following HTML snippet demonstrates one way to do this:
<p>
<em>Page last modified on <!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED" --></em>
</p>click below button to copy the code. By Apache tutorial team
Page last modified on Thursday, 20-Feb-2014 12:37:34 ESTclick below button to copy the code. By Apache tutorial team
Reusing HTML
- Another common use of SSI is reusing HTML (such as for a header or footer) in multiple pages.
- For example, you may have HTML code for a footer that you want to include in every page on your web site.
- You could copy this HTML manually to each page, but what happens when you want to make a change to the footer? You would have to edit each file individually.
- SSI provides an easy solution to this problem. Continuing our example, you can create a footer.html page that contains the footer code, and then reference the footer.html file in your web site pages by using the following HTML snippet:
<!--#include virtual="footer.html" -->click below button to copy the code. By Apache tutorial team
- Now the footer code is centralized in one location (the footer.html file), and all you have to do is add an SSI include directive to each page.
- When you modify code in the footer.html file, every page that includes it is updated automatically.
Using conditional expressions
- You can use conditional expressions in SSI to add basic flow control to your web pages.
- These conditional expressions work similarly to conditional statements in other programming languages.
- For example, the following HTML snippet demonstrates how to display different text based on the current date:
<!--#if expr="$DATE_LOCAL = /^Saturday/ || $DATE_LOCAL = /^Sunday/" -->
<p>It's the weekend!</p>
<!--#else -->
<p>It's not the weekend…</p>
<!--#endif -->click below button to copy the code. By Apache tutorial team
- If the $DATE_LOCAL variable's value begins with Saturday or Sunday, then the page displays It's the weekend! Otherwise, the page displays It's not the weekend