From: rst@ai.mit.edu (Robert S. Thau)
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 95 11:49:46 EDT
Message-Id: <9504131549.AA21854@volterra>
To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com
Cc: new-httpd@hyperreal.com
In-Reply-To: <m0rzQU9-0001VJC@mamba.ast.cam.ac.uk> (drtr@ast.cam.ac.uk)
Subject: Re: indexing suggestion
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   Date: Thu, 13 Apr 95 16:07 BST
   From: drtr@ast.cam.ac.uk (David Robinson)
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   Reply-To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com

   >I'd like to see Apache act on the MIME type mapping for .idx
   >instead of having "/cgi-bin/idx/" prefixes to URLs.

   So how about a mime type for running a CGI script. .e.g.
   AddType application/x-script-parsed .idx /cgi-bin/idx

   The specified script would be called with the document URL as PATH_INFO,
   and the document file as PATH_INFO_TRANSLATED.

I *really* like this idea... here are a few possible improvements.
Instead of overloading PATH_INFO, give the script the document URL as
DOCUMENT_URI, as is currently done for server-side includes.  This is
a bit more consistent with the includes functionality, and it also
lets the script get at the real PATH_INFO, if any was supplied.

Also, instead of having a three-argument AddType directive, it might
be better to have a separate AddHandler directive --- this would allow
users to easily declare handlers for a MIME type with multiple
suffixes, or for their DefaultType, without having to repeat the name
of the handler several times, e.g.

   AddHandler text/plain /cgi-bin/format_setext_stuff

Finally, substitute directory indexing routines could be declared as
handlers for an appropriately chosen MIME type, say

   AddHandler application/x-unix-directory /cgi-bin/read-4dos-indexes

It's a little late to get this in for this week's vote, but I'll
probably implement it over the weekend, as specified above, if no one
has any strong objections.

rst