The #set Command

The #set command allows you to add your own variables that can be used with the #echo command. For format of a #set command is:

<!--#set var="..." value="..." -->

For example:

<!--#set var="title" value="My document's title" -->

The #set command is extremely powerful as it provides a means of passing 'arguments' to recursively included SSI pages. This is because the #set command adds to the global variable environment, so a parsed document can set a variable then include another parsed document which uses this variable, or vice versa. For example:

File title.shtml:

<!-- requires title -->

<!-- Imagine this is a complicated table -->
<!-- which puts the title at the top of  -->
<!-- the page in a standard fashion.     -->

<html>
<head>
 <title><!--#echo var="title"--></title>
</head>
<body bgcolor=#ffffff>
<table bgcolor=#f0f0c3 cellspacing=4>
<tr>
 <td>
   <font size=+3>
   <!--#echo var="title"-->
   </font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Then we could use this complex standard title in a document "About Zeus" as follows:

<!-- Set title, and include standard document header -->
<!--#set var="title" value="About Zeus" -->
<!--#include file="title.shtml" -->

Document body goes here.

<!-- We'd probably do the footer in the -->
<!-- same way, but for now we'll just   -->
<!-- terminate the html manually.       -->
</body>
</html>

Using the #set command allows the reuse of 'components' of HTML and is extremely useful in large web-site design.

Content Manager [Administrator] 16 December 2005

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The #set Command

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