HTML Tutorials: Server Side Includes (SSI)
SSI can save you a lot of time and code.
SSI (Server Side Includes) is an affective way to include
dynamic content thoughout a web site. This is accomplished
by putting one line of code on various web pages which
references and outputs code from one location. SSI can
is often used for web site headers, footers, and for elements
like news scripts. SSI is makes us of CGI which it a feature
provided by almost all hosting providers nowadays. Similar
results can also be had by uses PHP, ASP, or other server
languages. But, anywho, let's get started.
The basic syntax for SSI is:
<!--#command="file that is being included"-->
The most widely used SSI's are CGI execution, Include File,
and Time and Date inclusion. Here is the syntax, for
example, if you execute a cgi script called file.cgi:
<!--#exec cgi="file.cgi"-->
If you wanted to include an HTML fragment saved as the
file, "file.html,"
you would use the following code:
<!--#include file="file.html"-->
Lastly, to include the date, you would use:
<!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL"-->
In the first version of Spoono, we once included a footer
using SSI at the bottom of every page which looked like
this:
<!--#exec cgi="footer.cgi"-->
This linked to the footer.cgi file which contained the
following:
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print <<EOF ;
<BR><DIV ALIGN=CENTER CLASS="footer"><A
HREF="/">Home</A> | <A href="/webmaster-info/tutorials/index.asp">Tutorials</A>
| <A
HREF="/webmaster-resources/">Webmaster Resources</A>
| <A HREF="/Sitemap/">Site Map</A> | <A
HREF="/support/info/">Support Forum</A></DIV><BR><DIV
ALIGN=CENTER CLASS="copy">Copyright ©2006.
All Rights Reserved.<BR>
Please view our <A HREF="/about/terms.asp">Terms
of Service</A>.</DIV><BR>
EOF
exit;
You might not understand the CGI portion, but you get the
idea that the HTML is what is inserted. Similarly, I
could use the include file command and create a footer.html
file (note: use include file with HTML files and exec
cgi for CGI files). For example, here is what footer.html
would look like:
<BR><DIV ALIGN=CENTER CLASS="footer"><A
HREF="/">Home</A> | <A href="/webmaster-info/tutorials/index.asp">Tutorials</A>
| <A
HREF="/webmaster-resources/">Webmaster Resources</A>
| <A HREF="/Sitemap/">Site Map</A> | <A
HREF="/support/info/">Support Forum</A></DIV><BR><DIV
ALIGN=CENTER CLASS="copy">Copyright © 2006.
All Rights Reserved.<BR>
Please view our <A HREF="/about/terms.asp">Terms
of Service</A>.</DIV><BR>
And to insert this HTML using the include file command,
input this code:
<!--#include file="footer.html"-->
For a quick review, the general form for making an a exec
cgi file like our footer example is like the following:
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print <<EOF ;
YOUR HTML GOES HERE
EOF
exit;
Remember #!/usr/bin/perl is the path to PERL for Spoono,
contact your server administrator for your PERL path.
Also, save this as a cgi file, and upload it to your
server (CHMOD: 755), and call it, as described, in the
file where you want to include the HTML.
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