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Using SSI to create pages that are in effect just static documents is not where its real power
lies. To get the best from Server Side Includes, you should consider using the dynamic
commands.
Displaying system variables
There are many different system variables that can be displayed using a command in the form
of
<!--#ECHO VAR="FILLINTHEBLANK" -->
Note that "FILLINTHEBLANK" is not a real variable - it's something you have to do to
make a meaningful command. Here are some (not all) of the more common variables that can be
displayed:-
- <!--#ECHO VAR="DATE_LOCAL" -->
- The current local date and time.
<!--#ECHO VAR="DATE_GMT" -->- The current date and time in Greenwich Mean Time.
<!--#ECHO VAR="LAST_MODIFIED" -->- The date and time of the last modification of the current document.
<!--#ECHO VAR="DOCUMENT_NAME" -->- The complete local directory path of the current document.
<!--#ECHO VAR="DOCUMENT_URI" -->- The local path of the current document referenced to the base directory.
<!--#ECHO VAR="REFERER" -->- The URL of the page which referred the user to this document.
An example
You could make a dynamic "back" button for your site using the following code:-
<A HREF="<!--#ECHO VAR="REFERER" -->">Back a page</A>
This would create a literal "back" button that took the user back to the page they had
previously visited, rather than the previous page in the hierarchy of the site.
Executing CGI scripts
This is one of the most useful things you can do with SSI - run CGI scripts as a page loads.
<!--#EXEC CGI="script.cgi" -->
It depends on how the script is written whether you would actually see an obvious result from
this. The output is not usually sent to the browser.
I'm not sure if Spaceports have the exec cgi command enabled because of the security
issues involved. It is not as risky as exec cmd so it might be worth checking.
I'll update this page if I get a chance to find out.
If you wanted to include the output of a script into your document, you would use the include
command from earlier.
<!--#INCLUDE VIRTUAL="/~username/script.cgi" -->
With a combination of these two commands you could (with a lot of work) create a completely
dynamic site that displays different versions of the same page for the specific browser or even the
language of a particular visitor.
It would be a good idea to look closely at the features available with PHP first though.
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