Real challenge. dynamic ssi not possible? Help!

Question

I'm trying to reference static html pages from my pl/sql generated web pages without using frames. I can't seem to come up with any way to do this. Here's what I'm trying to essentially to do.
filename below is a static html page being referenced.
PROCEDURE onDemand
(filename in varchar2) IS
BEGIN
PageStart;
PageHeadbar;
PageNavbar;
htp.p('<table>');
htp.p('<tr><td>');
htp.p('<p>When This is working, the contents of the file <b>'||filename || '</b> will be included.</p>');
htp.p('</td></tr>');
htp.p('</table>');
PageEnd;
END onDemand;
The options I CAN'T use are:
1. Using utl_file to grab the contents of the file from that directory.
2. XML url referencing.
I thought maybe I could use the server side include option, but I don't see how I can integrate ssi with the mod_plsql output. I know I can compile a static html file as part of a psp compilation, but then it's completely embedded in the resulting procedure and I won't have any dynamic options.
One solution that may work but we're trying to avoid, is to load all the existing html files into tables and just pull them out at the time of the procedure is called. Still, we'd like to avoid this and use the existing html files in the directories that they are in.
Here's one possible option I was considering but am not sure how to make it work.
I was thinking I could make my procedure that I'm calling part of a package and name the procedure .shtml. When I call the procedure it produces the web page which will have a server side include command in it that would reference the file I need. If I can get the apache server to then run the results of the mod_plsql through the mod_include module, it would hopefully then pull in the file I was trying to include. Is there any way that this might work? Here's the package body of what I'm trying with this option.
create or replace package body ssi as
procedure shtml (filename in varchar2)
is
begin
PageStart;
PageHeadbar;
PageNavbar;
htp.p('<table>');
htp.p('<tr><td>');
htp.p('<p>When This is working, the contents of the file <b>'||filename || '</b> will be included.</p>');
htp.p('<!--#include virtual="../html/en/'||filename||'" -->');
htp.p('</td></tr>');
htp.p('</table>');
PageEnd;
end shtml;
end ssi;
If it would work, I'd call ssi.shtml?filename=example.html, the procedure creates the web page to be generated via the mod_plsql module, but then the mod_include module parses the page and pulls in the example.html.... is this possible? What would be the necessary configuration of the apache server to do this?
There has to be a better way. Any ideas would be much appreciated.
Kurt
[email protected]

Answer 1

This is a big reason to make the move to dynamic development. There are many sites that use PHP or CF and never connect to a database. The ability to have your menus, headers, footers added to your pages with one simple line of code such as:
<cfinclude template="FooterContent.cfm">
for ColdFusion or
<?php
include("FooterContent.php"); 
?>
for php
Makes it well worth moving from static HTML pages to using  CF or php.
Even if your host did support SSI's  you'll find true dynamic development to be a much more reliable solution - and this isn't even mentioning how to handle form submissions and so many other non database related functions... for example  this line of code
Copyright 2002 - <cfoutput>#DateFormat(Now(), "yyyy")#</cfoutput>
Will automatically show the current year at the end of your copyright statement in your footer - sweet, right?
Hope this encourages toy to make the move.
Lawrence Cramer - *Adobe Community Professional*
http://www.Cartweaver.com
PHP & ColdFusion Shopping Cart for Adobe Dreamweaver and code developers.
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