.. index::
single: Cache; SSI
single: SSI
.. _server-side-includes:
Working with Server Side Includes
=================================
In a similar way as :doc:`ESI (Edge Side Includes) `,
SSI can be used to control HTTP caching on fragments of a response.
The most important difference that is SSI is known directly by most
web servers like `Apache`_, `Nginx`_ etc.
The SSI instructions are done via HTML comments:
.. code-block:: html
There are some other `available directives`_ but
Symfony manages only the ``#include virtual`` one.
.. caution::
Be careful with SSI, your website may be victim of injections.
Please read this `OWASP article`_ first!
When the web server reads an SSI directive, it requests the given URI or gives
directly from its cache. It repeats this process until there is no more
SSI directives to handle. Then, it merges all responses into one and sends
it to the client.
.. _using-ssi-in-symfony:
Using SSI in Symfony
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
First, to use SSI, be sure to enable it in your application configuration:
.. configuration-block::
.. code-block:: yaml
# config/packages/framework.yaml
framework:
ssi: { enabled: true }
.. code-block:: xml
.. code-block:: php
// config/packages/framework.php
$container->loadFromExtension('framework', [
'ssi' => ['enabled' => true],
]);
Suppose you have a page with private content like a Profile page and you want
to cache a static GDPR content block. With SSI, you can add some expiration
on this block and keep the page private::
// src/Controller/ProfileController.php
// ...
class ProfileController extends AbstractController
{
public function index(): Response
{
// by default, responses are private
return $this->render('profile/index.html.twig');
}
public function gdpr(): Response
{
$response = $this->render('profile/gdpr.html.twig');
// sets to public and adds some expiration
$response->setSharedMaxAge(600);
return $response;
}
}
The profile index page has not public caching, but the GDPR block has
10 minutes of expiration. Let's include this block into the main one:
.. code-block:: twig
{# templates/profile/index.html.twig #}
{# you can use a controller reference #}
{{ render_ssi(controller('App\Controller\ProfileController::gdpr')) }}
{# ... or a URL #}
{{ render_ssi(url('profile_gdpr')) }}
The ``render_ssi`` twig helper will generate something like:
.. code-block:: html
``render_ssi`` ensures that SSI directive are generated only if the request
has the header requirement like ``Surrogate-Capability: device="SSI/1.0"``
(normally given by the web server).
Otherwise it will embed directly the sub-response.
.. note::
For more information about Symfony cache fragments, take a tour on
the :ref:`ESI documentation `.
.. _`Apache`: https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/en/howto/ssi.html
.. _`Nginx`: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_ssi_module.html
.. _`available directives`: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Side_Includes#Directives
.. _`OWASP article`: https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Server-Side_Includes_(SSI)_Injection