Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition

Content Negotiation

There may be different ways to handle the data that Apache returns, and there are two equivalent ways of implementing this functionality. The multiviews method is simpler (and more limited) than the *.var method, so we shall start with it. The Config file (from ... /site.multiview) looks like this:

User webuser
Group webgroup
ServerName www.butterthlies.com
DocumentRoot /usr/www/APACHE3/site.multiview/htdocs
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin /usr/www/APACHE3/cgi-bin
AddLanguage it .it
AddLanguage en .en
AddLanguage ko .ko
LanguagePriority it en ko

<Directory /usr/www/APACHE3/site.multiview/htdocs>
Options +
MultiViews
</Directory>

For historical reasons, you have to say:

Options +MultiViews

even though you might reasonably think that Options All would cover the case. The general idea is that whenever you want to offer variations of a file (e.g., JPG, GIF, or bitmap for images, or different languages for text), multiviews will handle it. Apache v2 offers a relevant directive.