Re: Alias section - a possible answer to websites under construction ?

Micha <[email protected]> writes:

> Now there's a typical problem (i mentioned it before on this
> list). Lets take kwiki.ffii.org, the most problematic (and chaotic)
> one in this respect. You can request the same page by, eg,
> 
> http://kwiki.ffii.org/EuDemocracyEn
> http://kwiki.ffii.org/?EuDemocracyEn
> http://kwiki.ffii.org/index.cgi?EuDemocracyEn
> 
> and now they even put up an alias http://wiki.ffii.org/EuDemocracyEn,
> 
> - which sums up to at least 6 http subtrees.

This is rather pointless.  They must have chosen deliberately to have
six URLs for the same content, but I cannot see any good reason for
it.

> I note there's the 'Alias' section, so my question is, can i make it
> 
> http://wiki.ffii.org/ = http://kwiki.ffii.org/
> http://kwiki.ffii.org/? = http://kwiki.ffii.org/
> http://kwiki.ffii.org/index.cgi? = http://kwiki.ffii.org/
> 
> and go on happily ? I did set it right now, but i'd appreciate some
> hints before going to discover in a month or so that i did it all
> wrong. 

The first one of these will work, but the others won't.  The Alias
section matching is not done on a substring of the whole URL, but is
done on the protocol, hostname and path only.  It is intended to allow
replacement of a directory tree on one host with a directory tree on
another (or the same) host.

> Are the entries order sensitive, in this case ?

The entries are always order sensitive.  Only one entry of the same
type can ever match and it is always the first.

> A related question is, can i consolidate (merge) the content of the
> different http subtrees (with a little shell command or script)
> easily, once the alias setting works ?

You can use the wwwoffle-mv command in the same way as the Alias
section.  But unfortunately for you it works exactly the same way as
the Alias section so you won't be able to do what you want with it.

-- 
Andrew.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew M. Bishop                             amb-Uxr6IM1mbv2TY6FTCsQk+9Bc4/[email protected]
                                      http://www.gedanken.demon.co.uk/

WWWOFFLE users page:
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