SSI and CGI : Capture a value?

[MattEvans]

This isn't an SSI or a CGI board, but I hear ColdFusion is quite SSI related, and it's the best place for this question I hope.

I'm wondering if it's possible to do something like this:

"html" page (actually XSL transformed XML page) has an SSI #include or #exec, then an SSI #if statement that does "something" based on a computation in the CGI...

Here's my questions with relation to that..

If I nest SSI functions will they be called in child > parent order or parent > child order? Can I read/write form/environment parameters in the CGI and read them back in the SSI #if?

I may have no need to do this eventually, but I only want my target modder-base to need to alter XSL files (to change style etc) and not look at CGI scripts... CSS is ok but not quite good enough, and I don't want to "read" XSL files in the CGI to simulate seamlessness... :( Any helper will get big shouts on my new site!

^_-

Matt

[MattEvans]

It was very simple actually. I didn't need to use SSI #ifs atall! The file gets parsed before the XSLT does any work, so:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="[URL]http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform[/URL]" version="1.0">
  <xsl:template name="logincontrols">
  
    <xsl:variable name="userID"><!--#include virtual="../../cgi/sustain.cgi"--></xsl:variable>
      
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="$userID = '-1'">
        [Display some login-related info here]
      </xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise>
        [Display some user-specific info here]
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>
  
</xsl:stylesheet>

works just fine, because by the time the template is called, the user's id number (or -1) for null is in that variable. Pretty cool, pretty cool. I have a custom MIME type "SSIXSL" to avoid parsing every XSL file every time...

XSL is pretty fantastic.