Apache Module mod_negotiation
Description: | Provides for content negotiation |
---|---|
Status: | Base |
ModuleIdentifier: | negotiation_module |
SourceFile: | mod_negotiation.c |
Summary
Content negotiation, or more accurately content selection, is the selection of the document that best matches the clients capabilities, from one of several available documents. There are two implementations of this.
- A type map (a file with the handler
type-map
) which explicitly lists the files containing the variants. - A Multiviews search (enabled by the
Multiviews
Options
), where the server does an implicit filename pattern match, and choose from amongst the results.
Type maps
A type map has a format similar to RFC822 mail headers. It contains document descriptions separated by blank lines, with lines beginning with a hash character ('#') treated as comments. A document description consists of several header records; records may be continued on multiple lines if the continuation lines start with spaces. The leading space will be deleted and the lines concatenated. A header record consists of a keyword name, which always ends in a colon, followed by a value. Whitespace is allowed between the header name and value, and between the tokens of value. The headers allowed are:
Content-Encoding:
- The encoding of the file. Apache only recognizes encodings that are defined by an
AddEncoding
directive. This normally includes the encodingsx-compress
for compress'd files, andx-gzip
for gzip'd files. Thex-
prefix is ignored for encoding comparisons. Content-Language:
- The language(s) of the variant, as an Internet standard language tag (RFC 1766). An example is
en
, meaning English. If the variant contains more than one language, they are separated by a comma. Content-Length:
- The length of the file, in bytes. If this header is not present, then the actual length of the file is used.
Content-Type:
- The MIME media type of the document, with optional parameters. Parameters are separated from the media type and from one another by a semi-colon, with a syntax of
name=value
. Common parameters include:level
- an integer specifying the version of the media type. For
text/html
this defaults to 2, otherwise 0. qs
- a floating-point number with a value in the range 0[.000] to 1[.000], indicating the relative 'quality' of this variant compared to the other available variants, independent of the client's capabilities. For example, a jpeg file is usually of higher source quality than an ascii file if it is attempting to represent a photograph. However, if the resource being represented is ascii art, then an ascii file would have a higher source quality than a jpeg file. All
qs
values are therefore specific to a given resource.
Example
Content-Type: image/jpeg; qs=0.8
URI:
- uri of the file containing the variant (of the given media type, encoded with the given content encoding). These are interpreted as URLs relative to the map file; they must be on the same server, and they must refer to files to which the client would be granted access if they were to be requested directly.
Body:
- The actual content of the resource may be included in the type-map file using the Body header. This header must contain a string that designates a delimiter for the body content. Then all following lines in the type map file will be considered part of the resource body until the delimiter string is found.
Example:
Body:----xyz---- <html> <body> <p>Content of the page.</p> </body> </html> ----xyz----
Consider, for example, a resource called document.html
which is available in English, French, and German. The files for each of these are called document.html.en
, document.html.fr
, and document.html.de
, respectively. The type map file will be called document.html.var
, and will contain the following:
URI: document.html Content-language: en Content-type: text/html URI: document.html.en Content-language: fr Content-type: text/html URI: document.html.fr Content-language: de Content-type: text/html URI: document.html.de
All four of these files should be placed in the same directory, and the .var
file should be associated with the type-map
handler with an AddHandler
directive:
AddHandler type-map .var
A request for document.html.var
in this directory will result in choosing the variant which most closely matches the language preference specified in the user's Accept-Language
request header.
If Multiviews
is enabled, and MultiviewsMatch
is set to "handlers" or "any", a request to document.html
will discover document.html.var
and continue negotiating with the explicit type map.
Other configuration directives, such as Alias
can be used to map document.html
to document.html.var
.
Multiviews
A Multiviews search is enabled by the Multiviews
Options
. If the server receives a request for /some/dir/foo
and /some/dir/foo
does not exist, then the server reads the directory looking for all files named foo.*
, and effectively fakes up a type map which names all those files, assigning them the same media types and content-encodings it would have if the client had asked for one of them by name. It then chooses the best match to the client's requirements, and returns that document.
The MultiviewsMatch
directive configures whether Apache will consider files that do not have content negotiation meta-information assigned to them when choosing files.
CacheNegotiatedDocs Directive
Description: | Allows content-negotiated documents to be cached by proxy servers |
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Syntax: | CacheNegotiatedDocs On|Off |
Default: | CacheNegotiatedDocs Off |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_negotiation |
If set, this directive allows content-negotiated documents to be cached by proxy servers. This could mean that clients behind those proxys could retrieve versions of the documents that are not the best match for their abilities, but it will make caching more efficient.
This directive only applies to requests which come from HTTP/1.0 browsers. HTTP/1.1 provides much better control over the caching of negotiated documents, and this directive has no effect in responses to HTTP/1.1 requests.
ForceLanguagePriority Directive
Description: | Action to take if a single acceptable document is not found |
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Syntax: | ForceLanguagePriority None|Prefer|Fallback [Prefer|Fallback] |
Default: | ForceLanguagePriority Prefer |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | FileInfo |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_negotiation |
The ForceLanguagePriority
directive uses the given LanguagePriority
to satisfy negotiation where the server could otherwise not return a single matching document.
ForceLanguagePriority Prefer
uses LanguagePriority
to serve a one valid result, rather than returning an HTTP result 300 (MULTIPLE CHOICES) when there are several equally valid choices. If the directives below were given, and the user's Accept-Language
header assigned en
and de
each as quality .500
(equally acceptable) then the first matching variant, en
, will be served.
LanguagePriority en fr de ForceLanguagePriority Prefer
ForceLanguagePriority Fallback
uses LanguagePriority
to serve a valid result, rather than returning an HTTP result 406 (NOT ACCEPTABLE). If the directives below were given, and the user's Accept-Language
only permitted an es
language response, but such a variant isn't found, then the first variant from the LanguagePriority
list below will be served.
LanguagePriority en fr de ForceLanguagePriority Fallback
Both options, Prefer
and Fallback
, may be specified, so either the first matching variant from LanguagePriority
will be served if more than one variant is acceptable, or first available document will be served if none of the variants matched the client's acceptable list of languages.
See also
LanguagePriority Directive
Description: | The precedence of language variants for cases where the client does not express a preference |
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Syntax: | LanguagePriority MIME-lang [MIME-lang] ... |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | FileInfo |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_negotiation |
The LanguagePriority
sets the precedence of language variants for the case where the client does not express a preference, when handling a Multiviews request. The list of MIME-lang are in order of decreasing preference.
LanguagePriority en fr de
For a request for foo.html
, where foo.html.fr
and foo.html.de
both existed, but the browser did not express a language preference, then foo.html.fr
would be returned.
Note that this directive only has an effect if a 'best' language cannot be determined by any other means or the ForceLanguagePriority
directive is not None
. In general, the client determines the language preference, not the server.
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