<!--#config errmsg="[Error: Include Failed]" --> <pre> <!--#include virtual="/debug/ssi_status.html" --> </pre> Nginx doesn’t parse SHTML natively like Apache. Instead, use ngx_http_subs_filter_module to view interpolated variables:
Then use an SSI directive to echo parsed content: view shtml extra quality
Options +Includes XBitHack on AddType text/html .shtml AddHandler server-parsed .shtml SSILogLevel debug SSILog ssi_log Method 3: Server-Side Debugging Modules (For Admins) If
location ~ \.shtml$ ssi on; ssi_types text/html; subs_filter '<!--#include virtual="(.*)" ?>' 'INCLUDED: $1' ir; You need automated quality checks
In the Network tab, right-click on the request → "Copy" → "Copy Response" to paste the fully rendered output into a diff tool (e.g., Beyond Compare, VS Code Diff) to compare production vs. staging SHTML outputs. Method 3: Server-Side Debugging Modules (For Admins) If you are a server administrator, you can configure your web server to output both the raw SHTML and the parsed version side-by-side. This is the ultimate "extra quality" inspection. Apache Configuration ( httpd.conf or .htaccess ) Enable extended SSI debugging:
| Symptom | Raw SHTML Visible | Parsed HTML Visible | Root Cause | Solution | |---------|-------------------|---------------------|-------------|----------| | Includes not resolving | <!--#include virtual="nav.html" --> | (empty or error) | SSI not enabled on server | Enable Options +Includes | | Infinite loop | <!--#include virtual="page.shtml" --> | Server timeout | Self-referential include | Add conditional logic to break loop | | Cached raw output | Old raw code shown | Older HTML shown | Proxy cache (Cloudflare, Varnish) storing raw | Bypass cache with ?nocache=1 query param | For enterprise teams, manual "view shtml" is not enough. You need automated quality checks. 1. Selenium with SSI-Aware Testing from selenium import webdriver driver = webdriver.Chrome() driver.get("http://site.com/page.shtml") Capture fully rendered DOM (not view source) rendered_html = driver.page_source Check for unparsed SSI directives if "<!--#" in rendered_html: print("FAIL: SSI directives not parsed") else: print("PASS: Extra quality output verified") 2. Diffbot or Custom Crawler Build a crawler that requests .shtml files with unique headers ( X-Require-Parsed: true ) and validates that no <!--# strings remain in the output. Alert on any deviation. The Future of SHTML and Quality Assurance With the rise of static site generators (Hugo, Eleventy), the core use case of SHTML (fragment inclusion without a database) is returning. However, modern CDNs like Cloudflare now support SSI at the Edge (using <!--#include in .html files served from Workers KV).