mod_publisher: Server Side Includes

mod_publisher implements Server Side Includes using the same handler code as mod_xhtml, with expression and interpolation code from mod_include. Since server side includes are familiar to users, we will confine our discussion to the differences between this implementation and mod_include, and how SSI processing relates to other processing supported by mod_publisher.

Differences with mod_include

SSI processing in mod_publisher mostly emulates the capabilities of the current mod_include in Apache 2.1.

Extensions

In addition to  and , mod_publisher implements a third include directive.

will include contents fetched from a remote URL.

Limitations

The SSI exec directive is deprecated in Apache, and not implemented in mod_xhtml. This will probably never be implemented. As in mod_include, include virtual is preferred.
Regular expressions in expression matching are not supported. This will probably be implemented sometime in future.

Other

mod_publisher's internationalisation support (as discussed under parse modes) is believed to be better than mod_include's.
Some mod_include directives depend on the ordering of attributes within an SSI comment: for example the encoding must come before the var in the echo directive. mod_publisher lifts this dependency.

Directives

MLCommentMode determines whether SSI processing is enabled.
SSIerrmsg sets the error message sent to the browser when a processing directive fails.
SSItimefmt sets the format for output of date/time fields.
SSIsizefmt sets the format for output of size fields.
MLProxyHost and MLProxyPort configure a proxy for #include url="..." directives fetching contents from another server.

The three SSI configuration directives set processing defaults that can be overridden in a document by the SSI config directive. They all work as documented under mod_include's config directive.

Precedence

If SSI comment processing is enabled, comments of the form  will be processed as SSI. However, this may be overridden if a namespace module implements a different handler for these directives.