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    <title>Apache module mod_negotiation</title>
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      <h3>Apache HTTP Server Version 1.3</h3>
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    <h1 align="CENTER">Module mod_negotiation</h1>

    <p>This module provides for <a
    href="../content-negotiation.html">content negotiation</a>.</p>

    <p><a href="module-dict.html#Status"
    rel="Help"><strong>Status:</strong></a> Base<br />
     <a href="module-dict.html#SourceFile"
    rel="Help"><strong>Source File:</strong></a>
    mod_negotiation.c<br />
     <a href="module-dict.html#ModuleIdentifier"
    rel="Help"><strong>Module Identifier:</strong></a>
    negotiation_module</p>

    <h2>Summary</h2>
    Content negotiation, or more accurately content selection, is
    the selection of the document that best matches the clients
    capabilities, from one of several available documents. There
    are two implementations of this. 

    <ul>
      <li>A type map (a file with the handler
      <code>type-map</code>) which explicitly lists the files
      containing the variants.</li>

      <li>A MultiViews search (enabled by the MultiViews <a
      href="core.html#options">Option</a>, where the server does an
      implicit filename pattern match, and choose from amongst the
      results.</li>
    </ul>

    <h2>Directives</h2>

    <ul>
      <li><a
      href="#cachenegotiateddocs">CacheNegotiatedDocs</a></li>

      <li><a href="#languagepriority">LanguagePriority</a></li>
    </ul>
    <strong>See also</strong>: <a
    href="./mod_mime.html#defaultlanguage">DefaultLanguage</a>, <a
    href="./mod_mime.html#addencoding">AddEncoding</a>, <a
    href="./mod_mime.html#addlanguage">AddLanguage</a>, <a
    href="./mod_mime.html#addtype">AddType</a>, and <a
    href="core.html#options">Options</a>. 

    <h2>Type maps</h2>
    A type map has the same format as RFC822 mail headers. It
    contains document descriptions separated by blank lines, with
    lines beginning with a hash character ('#') treated as
    comments. A document description consists of several header
    records; records may be continued on multiple lines if the
    continuation lines start with spaces. The leading space will be
    deleted and the lines concatenated. A header record consists of
    a keyword name, which always ends in a colon, followed by a
    value. Whitespace is allowed between the header name and value,
    and between the tokens of value. The headers allowed are: 

    <dl>
      <dt>Content-Encoding:</dt>

      <dd>The encoding of the file. Apache only recognizes
      encodings that are defined by an <a
      href="mod_mime.html#addencoding">AddEncoding</a> directive.
      This normally includes the encodings <code>x-compress</code>
      for compress'd files, and <code>x-gzip</code> for gzip'd
      files. The <code>x-</code> prefix is ignored for encoding
      comparisons.</dd>

      <dt>Content-Language:</dt>

      <dd>The language of the variant, as an Internet standard
      language tag (RFC 1766). An example is <code>en</code>,
      meaning English.</dd>

      <dt>Content-Length:</dt>

      <dd>The length of the file, in bytes. If this header is not
      present, then the actual length of the file is used.</dd>

      <dt>Content-Type:</dt>

      <dd>
        The MIME media type of the document, with optional
        parameters. Parameters are separated from the media type
        and from one another by a semi-colon, with a syntax of
        <code>name=value</code>. Common parameters include: 

        <dl>
          <dt>level</dt>

          <dd>an integer specifying the version of the media type.
          For <code>text/html</code> this defaults to 2, otherwise
          0.</dd>

          <dt>qs</dt>

          <dd>a floating-point number with a value in the range 0.0
          to 1.0, indicating the relative 'quality' of this variant
          compared to the other available variants, independent of
          the client's capabilities. For example, a jpeg file is
          usually of higher source quality than an ascii file if it
          is attempting to represent a photograph. However, if the
          resource being represented is ascii art, then an ascii
          file would have a higher source quality than a jpeg file.
          All qs values are therefore specific to a given
          resource.</dd>
        </dl>
        Example: 

        <blockquote>
          <code>Content-Type: image/jpeg; qs=0.8</code>
        </blockquote>
      </dd>

      <dt>URI:</dt>

      <dd>The path to the file containing this variant, relative to
      the map file.</dd>
    </dl>

    <h2>MultiViews</h2>
    A MultiViews search is enabled by the MultiViews <a
    href="core.html#options">Option</a>. If the server receives a
    request for <code>/some/dir/foo</code> and
    <code>/some/dir/foo</code> does <em>not</em> exist, then the
    server reads the directory looking for all files named
    <code>foo.*</code>, and effectively fakes up a type map which
    names all those files, assigning them the same media types and
    content-encodings it would have if the client had asked for one
    of them by name. It then chooses the best match to the client's
    requirements, and returns that document. 
    <hr />

    <h2><a id="cachenegotiateddocs"
    name="cachenegotiateddocs">CacheNegotiatedDocs</a>
    directive</h2>
    <a href="directive-dict.html#Syntax"
    rel="Help"><strong>Syntax:</strong></a>
    CacheNegotiatedDocs<br />
     <a href="directive-dict.html#Context"
    rel="Help"><strong>Context:</strong></a> server config<br />
     <a href="directive-dict.html#Status"
    rel="Help"><strong>Status:</strong></a> Base<br />
     <a href="directive-dict.html#Module"
    rel="Help"><strong>Module:</strong></a> mod_negotiation<br />
     <a href="directive-dict.html#Compatibility"
    rel="Help"><strong>Compatibility:</strong></a>
    CacheNegotiatedDocs is only available in Apache 1.1 and later. 

    <p>If set, this directive allows content-negotiated documents
    to be cached by proxy servers. This could mean that clients
    behind those proxys could retrieve versions of the documents
    that are not the best match for their abilities, but it will
    make caching more efficient.</p>

    <p>This directive only applies to requests which come from
    HTTP/1.0 browsers. HTTP/1.1 provides much better control over
    the caching of negotiated documents, and this directive has no
    effect in responses to HTTP/1.1 requests.</p>
    <hr />

    <h2><a id="languagepriority"
    name="languagepriority">LanguagePriority</a> directive</h2>
    <!--%plaintext &lt;?INDEX {\tt LanguagePriority} directive&gt; -->
    <a href="directive-dict.html#Syntax"
    rel="Help"><strong>Syntax:</strong></a> LanguagePriority
    <em>MIME-lang</em> [<em>MIME-lang</em>] ...<br />
     <a href="directive-dict.html#Context"
    rel="Help"><strong>Context:</strong></a> server config, virtual
    host, directory, .htaccess<br />
     <a href="directive-dict.html#Override"
    rel="Help"><strong>Override:</strong></a> FileInfo<br />
     <a href="directive-dict.html#Status"
    rel="Help"><strong>Status:</strong></a> Base<br />
     <a href="directive-dict.html#Module"
    rel="Help"><strong>Module:</strong></a> mod_negotiation 

    <p>The LanguagePriority sets the precedence of language
    variants for the case where the client does not express a
    preference, when handling a MultiViews request. The list of
    <em>MIME-lang</em> are in order of decreasing preference.
    Example:</p>

    <blockquote>
      <code>LanguagePriority en fr de</code>
    </blockquote>
    For a request for <code>foo.html</code>, where
    <code>foo.html.fr</code> and <code>foo.html.de</code> both
    existed, but the browser did not express a language preference,
    then <code>foo.html.fr</code> would be returned. 

    <p>Note that this directive only has an effect if a 'best'
    language cannot be determined by any other means. Correctly
    implemented HTTP/1.1 requests will mean this directive has no
    effect.</p>

    <p><strong>See also</strong>: <a
    href="./mod_mime.html#defaultlanguage">DefaultLanguage</a> and
    <a href="./mod_mime.html#addlanguage">AddLanguage</a> 
        <hr />

    <h3 align="CENTER">Apache HTTP Server Version 1.3</h3>
    <a href="./"><img src="../images/index.gif" alt="Index" /></a>
    <a href="../"><img src="../images/home.gif" alt="Home" /></a>

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