Content negotiation based on date?

[Lars Rander <ma...@rander.dk>]

I'm in the process of setting up my Apache (1.3.19) to do content 
negotiation. It works, but I've got a small problem that I would like some 
help with... :-)

Let's say that I've got a dir named foo, containing three files named bar, 
followed by a date in the form YYYYMMDD and then the extension. That is:

/foo/bar.20020126.html
/foo/bar.20020127.html
/foo/bar.20020128.html

If I then request just /foo/bar, I would like Apache to serve the document 
with the newest date, in this case /foo/bar.20020128.html - only problem 
is, it just serves the first document it encounters in the directory, 
/foo/bar.20020126.html.

I've looked over everything I could find via Google on content negotiation 
with no luck. Also, I have read Apaches documentation on URL Rewriting 
(mod_rewrite), but I really don't understand regexps! :-(



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RE: Content negotiation based on date?

[Joshua Slive <jo...@slive.ca>]

> From: Lars Rander [mailto:maillist@rander.dk]

> Let's say that I've got a dir named foo, containing three files
> named bar,
> followed by a date in the form YYYYMMDD and then the extension. That is:
>
> /foo/bar.20020126.html
> /foo/bar.20020127.html
> /foo/bar.20020128.html
>
> If I then request just /foo/bar, I would like Apache to serve the
> document
> with the newest date, in this case /foo/bar.20020128.html - only problem
> is, it just serves the first document it encounters in the directory,
> /foo/bar.20020126.html.
>
> I've looked over everything I could find via Google on content
> negotiation
> with no luck. Also, I have read Apaches documentation on URL Rewriting
> (mod_rewrite), but I really don't understand regexps! :-(

This can't be done in any standard way in Apache.  You could probably coax
mod_rewrite into doing it with some kind of prg: magic, but I don't
recommend it.  Instead, I would do one of the following:

- Write yourself a custom module (in C or perl/mod_perl) that does this.

- Modify your content creation system so that this sort of thing isn't
necessary.  For example, make sure that the most recent file has a different
base name (or has a symlink from a different base name).

The second option is probably much easier.

Joshua.


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