The SSIResource reference guide.

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# SSIResource

The SSI resource implements server-side parsing of HTML documents. Inside an SSIResource-indexed file, any comment of the form `<!--#commandName param1=val1 param2=val2 ... paramn=valn -->` will be interpreted as a command. Commands are looked up in an instance of the class supplied in the registryClass attribute. This class must be a subclass of the abstract class w3c.jigsaw.ssi.CommandRegistry. Commands are implementations of the Command interface or the w3c.jigsaw.ssi.ControlCommand interface.

If no command registry is specified, the resource will default to w3c.jigsaw.ssi.DefaultCommandRegistry, which incorporates the most commonly used commands (including a set of commands analogous to the directives used by the NCSA server SSI module.)

The replies from each of the commands ("partial replies") are merged into a global reply. A `Content-Length` header will be emitted, provided that each of the commands emits one.

The following variables are always defined initially, independent of the command registry used:

- `Boolean secure`: the value of the `secure` attribute at the time of the request.
- `Integer maxDepth`: the value of the `maxDepth` attribute at the time of the request.
- `Integer depth`: the current include nesting depth.
- `CommandRegistry registry`: the current command registry.

Please note that both the CommandRegistry base class and the Command interface are likely to change in future releases.

### Known Bugs / Limitations

- In EchoCommand, GMT dates are not formatted using the datefmt config variable (instead, they're always formatted in "Java format").
- Validation using entity tags is not supported (yet).
- There is no support of a customized failure message in DefaultCommandRegistry.
- Commands have no option of determining their own persistency format. This could give better performance for some commands.
- Not all the headers from partial replies are merged. (It doesn't really make sense for some).

## Inherits

The SSIResource class inherits from the following classes:

- FileResource

## Attributes description

The DirectoryResource defines the following attributes:

- registryClass
- maxDepth
- secure

`registryClass`

semantics
  The class that the command registry is to be an instance of. It must be a subclass of w3c.jigsaw.ssi.CommandRegistry.
type
  This attribute is an editable ClassAttribute.
default value
  This attribute defaults to w3c.jigsaw.ssi.DefaultCommandRegistry.

maxDepth

semantics
  The maximum depth of recursive document inclusion. Every time a document is included, a counter is increased. If this count gets to be equal to maxDepth, any further inclusion commands will be ignored. (Note that whether or not a command qualifies as an "inclusion command" is completely dependent on the command registry being used).
  If set to 0, no recursion limit will be enforced.
type
  This attribute is an editable IntegerAttribute.
default value
  This attribute defaults to 10.

secure

semantics
  If true, only secure commands will be permitted. The definition of "secure" is fully dependent on the command registry used. In the case of the DefaultCommandRegistry, all commands except for `exec` are considered secure.
type
  This attribute is an editable BooleanAttribute.
default value
  This attribute defaults to true.

Antonio Ramírez
$Id: w3c.jigsaw.ssi.SSIResource.html,v 1.7 1996/09/25 14:23:16 abaird Exp $