NAME

       ssi — Server-Side-Includes CGI program

SYNOPSIS

       ssi

DESCRIPTION

       This is an external CGI program that provides the same functionality as the built-in server-side-includes
       feature in many HTTP daemons.  It is written for use with thttpd(8) and merecat(8), but should be easy to
       adapt to other systems.

       There  are  two  ways to use this; the modern way of using a .shtml pattern in merecat.conf(5) to trigger
       the SSI script, which requires enabling  the  SSI  module.   Then  there  is  the  traditional  thttpd(8)
       approach.  We start with the relevant settings needed in merecat.conf:

             ssi {
                 enabled = true
                 pattern = "**.shtml"        # default
                 cgi-path = "cgi-bin/ssi"    # default, web server root is used
             }

       The  traditional thttpd way runs ssi as a simple CGI script, which requires placing the ssi binary in the
       web server CGI area, and enabling CGI.  Then set up URLs with the path to the document to  parse  as  the
       "pathinfo".   That's  the part of the URL that comes after the CGI program name.  For example, if the URL
       to this program is:

           http://www.acme.com/cgi-bin/ssi

       and the url for the document is:

           http://www.acme.com/users/wecoyote/doc.html

       then the compound URL would be:

           http://www.acme.com/cgi-bin/ssi/users/wecoyote/doc.html

INCLUDE FORMAT

       The format description below is adapted from ⟨http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/tutorials/includes.html⟩.

       All directives are formatted as SGML comments within the document.  This is in case the  document  should
       ever find itself in the client's hands unparsed.  Each directive has the following format:

           <!--#command tag1="value1" tag2="value2" -->

       Note:  the  lack  of  space  between the initial HTML comment start and the #command.  This is explicitly
       stated in the standard and strictly enforced by all web servers implementing SSI.

       Each command takes different arguments, most only accept one tag at a time.  Here is a breakdown  of  the
       commands and their associated tags:

       config  The config directive controls various aspects of the file parsing.  There are two valid tags:

               timefmt
                       gives  the  server a new format to use when providing dates.  This is a string compatible
                       with the strftime(3) library call.

               sizefmt
                       determines the formatting to be used when displaying the size of a file.   Valid  choices
                       are  bytes,  for  a  formatted  byte  count  (formatted  as  1,234,567), or abbrev for an
                       abbreviated version displaying the number of kilobytes or megabytes the file occupies.

               errmsg  overrides the default; "[an error occurred while processing this directive]"

       include
               Inserts the text of another document into the parsed  document.   The  inserted  file  is  parsed
               recursively,  so  it  can  contain  server-side-include directives too.  This command accepts two
               tags:

               virtual
                       Gives a virtual path to a document on the server.

               file    Gives a pathname relative to the current directory. ../ cannot be used in this  pathname,
                       nor can absolute paths be used.

       echo    Prints  the value of one of the include variables (defined below).  Any dates are printed subject
               to the currently configured timefmt.  The only valid tag to this command is var, whose  value  is
               the name of the variable you wish to echo.

       fsize   prints  the  size  of the specified file, subject to the sizefmt parameter to the config command.
               Valid tags are the same as with the include command.

       flastmod
               prints the last modification date of the specified file, subject  to  the  formatting  preference
               given by the timefmt parameter to config.  Valid tags are the same as with the include command.

VARIABLES

       A  number  of variables are made available to parsed documents.  In addition to the CGI variable set, the
       following variables are made available:

       DOCUMENT_NAME
               The current filename.

       DOCUMENT_URI
               The virtual path to this document (such as /~robm/foo.shtml).

       QUERY_STRING_UNESCAPED
               The unescaped version of any search query the client sent.

       DATE_LOCAL
               The current date, local time zone.  Subject to the timefmt parameter to the config command.

       DATE_GMT
               Same as DATE_LOCAL but in Greenwich mean time (GMT).

       LAST_MODIFIED
               The last modification date of the current document.  Subject to timefmt like the others.

SEE ALSO

       merecat(8), merecat.conf(5), strftime(3)

AUTHORS

       Jef Poskanzer <jef@mail.acme.com> wrote the original for use with thttpd.
       Joachim Wiberg <troglobit@gmail.com> added minor features and a trigger in merecat for .shtml pages.

BUGS

       Does not implement all "modern" SSI directives are supported. E.g., exec cgi and exec cmd or any  control
       directives like if, elif, else, endif, etc.  Patches and pull-requests are welcome :)

merecat (2.32)                                     Aug 3, 2019                                            SSI(8)