Apache: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition

6.4. Type Maps

In the last section, we looked at multiviews as a way of providing language and image negotiation. The other way to achieve the same effects in the current release of Apache, and more lavish effects later (probably to negotiate browser plug-ins), is to use type maps, also known as *.var files. Multiviews works by scrambling together a vanilla type map; now you have the chance to set it up just as you want it. The Config file is as follows:

User webuser
Group webgroup
ServerName www.butterthlies.com
DocumentRoot /usr/www/site.typemap/htdocs
AddHandler type-map var
DirectoryIndex index.var
AccessConfig /dev/null
ResourceConfig /dev/null

One should write, as seen in this file:

            AddHandler type-map var

Having set that, we can sensibly say:

            DirectoryIndex index.var

to set up a set of language-specific indexes.

What this means, in plainer English, is that the DirectoryIndex line overrides the default index file index.html. If you also want index.html to be used as an alternative, you would have to specify it—but you probably don't, because you are trying to do something more elaborate here. In this case there are several versions of the index: index.en.html, index.it.html, index.ko.html, so Apache looks for index.var for an explanation.

Look at ... /site.typemap/htdocs. We want to offer language-specific versions of the index.html file and alternatives to the generalized images bath, hen, tree, and bench, so we create two files, index.var and bench.var (we will ...