Naming the Files to Serve

Steps When Using DIRMAP Files

1. For a file in a minidisk or SFS directory, give the file a valid CMS filename and filetype. For a file in a BFS directory, give the file a valid BFS file name.

2. If the CMS filetype or BFS extension does not identify the file's characteristics, specify the content_filetype parameter on the FILE directory control record.

Steps When Not Using DIRMAP Files

1. For a file in an SFS directory, give the file a valid CMS filename.

   For a file in a BFS directory, give the file a valid BFS file name. When a web browser user requests the BFS file, he specifies the BFS file name in the URL. Although the following characters are valid in BFS file names, do not use them when naming your BFS file because the characters will cause the URL to be invalid:

   blank	semicolon (;)	question mark (?)
   colon (:)	at sign (@)	ampersand (&)
   equal sign (=)	plus sign (+)

    
   

2. For a file in an SFS directory, give the file a filetype that identifies the file characteristics. For a file in a BFS directory, give the file a BFS extension that identifies the file characteristics.

Identifying File Characteristics

VM:Webgateway needs information about a file to deliver it to a web browser and have the web browser display it correctly. In VM:Webgateway you convey the necessary information through the file's filetype or BFS extension.

The VM:Webgateway system administrator configures filetype definitions to map the characteristics of files to filetypes. Use one of the defined filetypes for your CMS file's filetype or your BFS file's extension to reflect the characteristics of your file.

To display filetype definitions that the system administrator configured, enter the QUERY FILETYPE command from a VM userid. The following shows sample output from the QUERY FILETYPE command:

 Filetype  Characteristics                    
 --------  -----------------------------------
 HTML      FILE TRANSLATE USENGLISH           
           CONTENT-TYPE text/html SSI NO      
           FILTER NONE                        
 VIWCGI    CGI AUTHHEADERPASSED NO ENVIRONMENT
           SVMEXEC 

The first keyword listed in the characteristics for a filetype indicates whether the filetype is for a static file or a CGI program. For a description of the rest of the characteristics, refer to the QUERY FILETYPE command.

If you are using DIRMAP files, you can use a filetype or extension that does not have a configured filetype definition if you identify a file's characteristics using the content_filetype parameter on the FILE directory control record.