How to inject HTML code into every delivered HTML page?

Question

I've got an Apache web server that delivers static HTML pages. For some reason I can't change the files themselves, but I still want to inject some HTML into every page that is being served.

Is this possible with mod_proxy? If not, could anyone recommend a software that provides such a feature?

EDIT: I have to insert some kind of banner ad (e.g. a javascript) and a tracking pixel.

Answer 1

You could do this: Work with mod_rewrite to change requests from

/some/static/page.html

to

/htmlinjector.php?url=/some/static/page.html

then use PHP (or whatever you find appropriate) to do the file-manipulation. Add an output cache to improve performance.

As an alternative, Apache Handlers sound helpful:

Modifying static content using a CGI script

The following directives will cause requests for files with the html extension to trigger the launch of the footer.pl CGI script.

Action add-footer /cgi-bin/footer.pl
AddHandler add-footer .html

Then the CGI script is responsible for sending the originally requested document (pointed to by the PATH_TRANSLATED environment variable) and making whatever modifications or additions are desired.

This is more or less what the mod_rewrite approach would do, only with less hackery.

Answer 2

Here is a tutorial on how to use mod_proxy_html to edit the links on a webpage ( the content). You might be able to apply this modify the html you want.

UPDATE: Are you sure you want to go this route? I think Apache is meant to serve content, not create it. This would probably go in the view part of a MVC framework. The reason I wouldn't recommend this is you are breaking the rule of modularity. Your web application will be intertwined with the application that server it, complicating future upgrades, moves, etc.

Answer 3

mod_sed is a good fit here. You can create an output filter that matches the closing head or body tag, for example, and insert your html before it.

Answer 4

I would prefer to do this with mod_rewrite and SSI.

First put the path into an environment variable

RewriteCond %{IS_SUBREQ} false
RewriteRule ^(/.*\.html) /page.shtml [E:filename:$1]

then process that in the shtml file

<!--#include virtual="$filename"-->

(parts of this solution are based on a stackoverflow question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/40133/getting-apache-to-modify-static-webpages-on-the-fly/1196832 )

Answer 5

Would a mod_perl module be any use?

http://search.cpan.org/~gozer/Apache2-Layout-0.6/lib/Apache2/Layout.pm

That might do what you want or, at least, point you in the right direction.

Answer 6

you can look into the header and footer directive of apache, described below

http://wannabe.guru.org/scott/hobbies/apache/

Answer 7

You could use Apache mod_substitute to inject html into outgoing responses using some criteria or regular expressions. Here is an explanation of how to achieve this.