Guides & Standards - Style - Resouces - SSI

Server Side Includes (SSI) are directives or instructions which you can place in your HTML documents to create output of environment variables (e.g., current time, date) and file statistics (e.g., date last modified).

Current Date
To insert the current date in your HTML document you could place the following line in your document:

Today's date is <!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL"-->. This produces the output: Today's date is Wednesday, 17-Nov-2004 11:12:45 EST.

GMT
To insert the Greenwich Mean Time place the following line in your document:

The current GMT time is <!--#echo var="DATE_GMT"-->. This produces the output: The current GMT time is Wednesday, 17-Nov-2004 16:12:45 GMT.

Last Modified
To insert the date your document was last modified:

This document was last modified <!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED"-->. This produces the output: This document was last modified Wednesday, 17-Nov-2004 10:55:56 EST.

Include file - useful if you have information that will be repeated in numerous documents.
To include the contents of another file in your document:

<!--#include file="file_name"-->

Include virtual
Inserts a file from a directory relative to the server root:

<!--#include virtual="/cwis/resources/file_name"-->

Tailoring Time and Date Output
The config command can be used to select the way the date and time are displayed.
For example:

<!--#config timefmt="%a, %D %I:%M%p"-->
This file was last modified on <!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED"--> This produces the output: This file was last modified on Wed, 11/17/04 10:55AM.

The %a specifies the day of week abbreviation. %D specifies that the date should be in the mm/dd/yy format. %I specifies the hour of a 12-hour clock. %M specifies the minutes and %p specifies AM or PM.

You can use the following time formats:

SSI Time Formats
Format	Value	Example
%a	Day of the week abbreviation	Sun
%A	Day of the week	Sunday
%b	Month name abbreviation	Jan
%B	Month name	January
%d	Date	01
%D	Date as mm/dd/yy	01/02/00
%e	Date	1
%H	24-hour clock	13
%I	12-hour clock	01
%j	Decimal day of the year	360
%m	Month number	11
%M	Minutes	06
%p	AM | PM	AM
%r	Time as %I:%M:%S%p	06:23:46 PM
%S	Seconds	04
%T	24-hour time as %H:%M:%S	14:39:25
%U or %W	Week of the year	51
%w	Day of the week number	5
%y	Year of the century	00
%Y	Year	2000
%Z	Time Zone	EST

SSI directives have the following format: <!--#command parameter="argument"--> where "command" can be any one of the following commands and "argument" is the appropriate "parameter" listed below.

 

SSI Directives
Command	Parameter	Description
echo	var	Inserts value of special SSI variables and other environment variables
include		Inserts text of document into current file
	file	Pathname relative to current directory
	virtual	Virtual path to a document on the server
config	timefmt	Changes the time format

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