Running SSI (Server Side Include) scripts in Apache Tomcat

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Server Side Includes provide the web user with a handful of facilities that can be included in their HTML pages, to be parsed out / completed by the server. For example, the date and time can be included in a web page using an SSI.

Both httpd and Tomcat can support SSIs, provided that the server is configured to provide the support; where the configuration IS done, it's usual for an extension .sht or .shtml to be used.

SAMPLE SSI SCRIPT

Here's a sample "ssi" script that you might want to install on your Tomcat server:

<head><title>Linux, Apache httpd, Tomcat, MySQL, Java</title></head>
<body><h1>Linux, Apache httpd, Tomcat, MySQL and Java</h1>
This is part of a sample web application that tests Tomcat deployment.
<hr>
Server side include - date is 
<hr>
Page written by Well House Consultants Ltd, +44 (0) 1225 708225<br>
web <a href=http://www.wellho.net>http://www.wellho.net</a><br>
email <a href=mailto:info@wellho.net>info@wellho.net</a><br>
</body>

CONFIGURING TOMCAT TO SUPPORT SSI

Although SSI support is shipped with the standard Tomcat load, the vital information that you'll need is commented out in the web.xml file and you need to uncomment the following to add in the support:

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>ssi</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>
          org.apache.catalina.ssi.SSIServlet
        </servlet-class>
        <init-param>
          <param-name>buffered</param-name>
          <param-value>1</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <init-param>
          <param-name>debug</param-name>
          <param-value>0</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <init-param>
          <param-name>expires</param-name>
          <param-value>666</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <init-param>
          <param-name>isVirtualWebappRelative</param-name>
          <param-value>0</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>4</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

and also you need to map appropriate URLs on to that support:

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>ssi</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>*.shtml</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

There's one further change to make - the SSI API is provided in a .jar file that you need to rename in the /usr/local/tomcat/server/lib (or similarly named) directory:

mv servlets-ssi.renametojar servlets-ssi.jar

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