The index of a directory can come from one of two
sources:
A file written by the user, typically called
index.html. The DirectoryIndex directive sets the
name of this file. This is controlled by
mod_dir.
Otherwise, a listing generated by the server. The other
directives control the format of this listing. The AddIcon, AddIconByEncoding and
AddIconByType are
used to set a list of icons to display for various file types;
for each file listed, the first icon listed that matches the
file is displayed. These are controlled by
mod_autoindex.
The two functions are separated so that you can completely
remove (or replace) automatic index generation should you want
to.
Automatic index generation is enabled with using
Options +Indexes. See the
Options directive for
more details.
If the FancyIndexing option is given with the IndexOptions directive,
the column headers are links that control the order of the
display. If you select a header link, the listing will be
regenerated, sorted by the values in that column. Selecting the
same header repeatedly toggles between ascending and descending
order. These column header links are suppressed with
IndexOptions directive's
SuppressColumnSorting option.
Note that when the display is sorted by "Size", it's the
actual size of the files that's used, not the
displayed value - so a 1010-byte file will always be displayed
before a 1011-byte file (if in ascending order) even though
they both are shown as "1K".
Apache 2.0.23 reorganized the Query Arguments for Column
Sorting, and introduced an entire group of new query options.
To effectively eliminate all client control over the output,
the IndexOptions
IgnoreClient option was introduced.
The column sorting headers themselves are self-referencing
hyperlinks that add the sort query options shown below. Any
option below may be added to any request for the directory
resource.
C=N sorts the directory by file name
C=M sorts the directory by last-modified
date, then file name
C=S sorts the directory by size, then file
name
C=D sorts the directory by description, then
file name
O=A sorts the listing in Ascending
Order
O=D sorts the listing in Descending
Order
F=0 formats the listing as a simple list
(not FancyIndexed)
F=1 formats the listing as a FancyIndexed
list
F=2 formats the listing as an
HTMLTable FancyIndexed list
V=0 disables version sorting
V=1 enables version sorting
P=pattern lists only files matching
the given pattern
Note that the 'P'attern query argument is tested
after the usual IndexIgnore directives are processed,
and all file names are still subjected to the same criteria as
any other autoindex listing. The Query Arguments parser in
mod_autoindex will stop abruptly when an unrecognized
option is encountered. The Query Arguments must be well formed,
according to the table above.
The simple example below, which can be clipped and saved in
a header.html file, illustrates these query options. Note that
the unknown "X" argument, for the submit button, is listed last
to assure the arguments are all parsed before mod_autoindex
encounters the X=Go input.
<form action="" method="get">
Show me a <select name="F">
<option value="0"> Plain list</option>
<option value="1" selected="selected"> Fancy list</option>
<option value="2"> Table list</option>
</select>
Sorted by <select name="C">
<option value="N" selected="selected"> Name</option>
<option value="M"> Date Modified</option>
<option value="S"> Size</option>
<option value="D"> Description</option>
</select>
<select name="O">
<option value="A" selected="selected"> Ascending</option>
<option value="D"> Descending</option>
</select>
<select name="V">
<option value="0" selected="selected"> in Normal order</option>
<option value="1"> in Version order</option>
</select>
Matching <input type="text" name="P" value="*" />
<input type="submit" name="X" value="Go" />
</form>
AddAlt provides the alternate text to
display for a file, instead of an icon, for FancyIndexing.
File is a file extension, partial filename, wild-card
expression or full filename for files to describe.
If String contains any whitespace, you have to enclose it
in quotes (" or '). This alternate text
is displayed if the client is image-incapable, has image loading
disabled, or fails to retrieve the icon.
AddAltByEncoding provides the alternate
text to display for a file, instead of an icon, for FancyIndexing.
MIME-encoding is a valid content-encoding, such as
x-compress. If String contains any whitespace,
you have to enclose it in quotes (" or ').
This alternate text is displayed if the client is image-incapable,
has image loading disabled, or fails to retrieve the icon.
AddAltByType sets the alternate text to
display for a file, instead of an icon, for FancyIndexing.
MIME-type is a valid content-type, such as
text/html. If String contains any whitespace,
you have to enclose it in quotes (" or ').
This alternate text is displayed if the client is image-incapable,
has image loading disabled, or fails to retrieve the icon.
This sets the description to display for a file, for
FancyIndexing.
File is a file extension, partial filename, wild-card
expression or full filename for files to describe.
String is enclosed in double quotes (").
Example
AddDescription "The planet Mars" /web/pics/mars.gif
The typical, default description field is 23 bytes wide. 6
more bytes are added by the IndexOptions SuppressIcon option, 7 bytes are
added by the IndexOptions SuppressSize option, and 19 bytes are
added by the IndexOptions SuppressLastModified option.
Therefore, the widest default the description column is ever
assigned is 55 bytes.
See the DescriptionWidthIndexOptions keyword for details on overriding the size
of this column, or allowing descriptions of unlimited length.
Caution
Descriptive text defined with AddDescription
may contain HTML markup, such as tags and character entities. If the
width of the description column should happen to truncate a tagged
element (such as cutting off the end of a bolded phrase), the
results may affect the rest of the directory listing.
This sets the icon to display next to a file ending in
name for FancyIndexing. Icon is either a (%-escaped)
relative URL to the icon, or of the format
(alttext,url) where alttext
is the text tag given for an icon for non-graphical browsers.
Name is either ^^DIRECTORY^^ for directories,
^^BLANKICON^^ for blank lines (to format the list
correctly), a file extension, a wildcard expression, a partial
filename or a complete filename.
This sets the icon to display next to files with FancyIndexing.
Icon is either a (%-escaped) relative URL to the icon,
or of the format (alttext,url)
where alttext is the text tag given for an icon for
non-graphical browsers.
MIME-encoding is a wildcard expression matching
required the content-encoding.
This sets the icon to display next to files of type
MIME-type for FancyIndexing.
Icon is either a (%-escaped) relative URL to the icon,
or of the format (alttext,url)
where alttext is the text tag given for an icon for
non-graphical browsers.
MIME-type is a wildcard expression matching
required the mime types.
The DefaultIcon directive sets the icon
to display for files when no specific icon is known, for FancyIndexing.
Url-path is a (%-escaped) relative URL to the icon.
The HeaderName directive sets the name
of the file that will be inserted at the top of the index
listing. Filename is the name of the file to include.
Example
HeaderName HEADER.html
Both HeaderName and ReadmeName now treat
Filename as a URI path relative to the one used to
access the directory being indexed. If Filename begins
with a slash, it will be taken to be relative to the DocumentRoot.
Example
HeaderName /include/HEADER.html
Filename must resolve to a document with a major
content type of text/* (e.g.,
text/html, text/plain, etc.). This means
that filename may refer to a CGI script if the script's
actual file type (as opposed to its output) is marked as
text/html such as with a directive like:
AddType text/html .cgi
Content negotiation
will be performed if OptionsMultiViews is in effect. If filename resolves
to a static text/html document (not a CGI script) and
either one of the optionsIncludes or IncludesNOEXEC is enabled,
the file will be processed for server-side includes (see the
mod_include documentation).
If the file specified by HeaderName contains
the beginnings of an HTML document (<html>, <head>, etc.)
then you will probably want to set IndexOptions
+SuppressHTMLPreamble, so that these tags are not
repeated.
The IndexIgnore directive adds to the
list of files to hide when listing a directory. File is a
file extension, partial filename, wildcard expression or full
filename for files to ignore. Multiple IndexIgnore directives add
to the list, rather than the replacing the list of ignored
files. By default, the list contains . (the current
directory).
If this option is enabled, subdirectory listings will
always appear first, followed by normal files in the
directory. The listing is basically broken into two
components, the files and the subdirectories, and each is
sorted separately and then displayed subdirectories-first.
For instance, if the sort order is descending by name, and
FoldersFirst is enabled, subdirectory
Zed will be listed before subdirectory
Beta, which will be listed before normal files
Gamma and Alpha. This option
only has an effect if FancyIndexing is also enabled.
This experimental option with FancyIndexing constructs a
simple table for the fancy directory listing. Note this will
confuse older browsers. It is particularly necessary if file
names or description text will alternate between
left-to-right and right-to-left reading order, as can happen
on WinNT or other utf-8 enabled platforms.
Presence of this option, when used with IconWidth, will cause
the server to include height and width
attributes in the img tag for the file icon. This allows
browser to precalculate the page layout without having to wait until
all the images have been loaded. If no value is given for the option,
it defaults to the standard height of the icons supplied with the Apache
software.
Presence of this option, when used with IconHeight,
will cause the server to include height and
width attributes in the img tag for
the file icon. This allows browser to precalculate the page
layout without having to wait until all the images have been
loaded. If no value is given for the option, it defaults to
the standard width of the icons supplied with the Apache
software.
If this option is enabled, names are sorted in a case-insensitive
manner. For instance, if the sort order is ascending by name, and
IgnoreCase is enabled, file Zeta will be listed after file alfa
(Note: file GAMMA will always be listed before file gamma).
This enables the extraction of the title from HTML documents
for fancy indexing. If the file does not have a description
given by AddDescription
then httpd will read the document for the value of the
title element. This is CPU and disk intensive.
If specified, Apache will not make the column headings in a
FancyIndexed directory listing into links for sorting. The
default behavior is for them to be links; selecting the
column heading will sort the directory listing by the values
in that column. Prior to Apache 2.0.23, this also
disabled parsing the Query Arguments for the sort
string. That behavior is now controlled by IndexOptions
IgnoreClient in Apache 2.0.23.
This will suppress the file description in fancy indexing
listings. By default, no file descriptions are defined, and
so the use of this option will regain 23 characters of screen
space to use for something else. See AddDescription for information about setting the file
description. See also the DescriptionWidth
index option to limit the size of the description column.
If the directory actually contains a file specified by the
HeaderName
directive, the module usually includes the contents of the file
after a standard HTML preamble (<html>,
<head>, et cetera). The
SuppressHTMLPreamble option disables this behaviour,
causing the module to start the display with the header file
contents. The header file must contain appropriate HTML instructions
in this case. If there is no header file, the preamble is generated
as usual.
This will suppress the icon in fancy indexing listings.
Combining both SuppressIcon and
SuppressRules yields proper HTML 3.2 output, which
by the final specification prohibits img and
hr elements from the pre block (used to
format FancyIndexed listings.)
This will suppress the horizontal rule lines (hr
elements) in directory listings. Combining both SuppressIcon and
SuppressRules yields proper HTML 3.2 output, which
by the final specification prohibits img and
hr elements from the pre block (used to
format FancyIndexed listings.)
This returns the Last-Modified and ETag values for the listed
directory in the HTTP header. It is only valid if the
operating system and file system return appropriate stat()
results. Some Unix systems do so, as do OS2's JFS and Win32's
NTFS volumes. OS2 and Win32 FAT volumes, for example, do not.
Once this feature is enabled, the client or proxy can track
changes to the list of files when they perform a HEAD
request. Note some operating systems correctly track new and
removed files, but do not track changes for sizes or dates of
the files within the directory. Changes to the size
or date stamp of an existing file will not update the
Last-Modified header on all Unix platforms. If this
is a concern, leave this option disabled.
The VersionSort keyword causes files containing
version numbers to sort in a natural way. Strings are sorted as
usual, except that substrings of digits in the name and
description are compared according to their numeric value.
The addition of the incremental syntax (i.e., prefixing
keywords with + or -).
Whenever a '+' or '-' prefixed keyword is encountered, it
is applied to the current IndexOptions
settings (which may have been inherited from an upper-level
directory). However, whenever an unprefixed keyword is processed, it
clears all inherited options and any incremental settings encountered
so far. Consider the following example:
The net effect is equivalent to IndexOptions FancyIndexing
+SuppressSize, because the unprefixed FancyIndexing
discarded the incremental keywords before it, but allowed them to
start accumulating again afterward.
To unconditionally set the IndexOptions for
a particular directory, clearing the inherited settings, specify
keywords without any + or - prefixes.
The IndexOrderDefault directive is used
in combination with the FancyIndexing index option. By default, fancyindexed
directory listings are displayed in ascending order by filename; the
IndexOrderDefault allows you to change this
initial display order.
IndexOrderDefault takes two
arguments. The first must be either Ascending or
Descending, indicating the direction of the sort.
The second argument must be one of the keywords Name,
Date, Size, or Description,
and identifies the primary key. The secondary key is
always the ascending filename.
You can force a directory listing to only be displayed in a
particular order by combining this directive with the SuppressColumnSorting index option; this will prevent
the client from requesting the directory listing in a different
order.
The ReadmeName directive sets the name
of the file that will be appended to the end of the index
listing. Filename is the name of the file to include, and
is taken to be relative to the location being indexed. If
Filename begins with a slash, it will be taken to be
relative to the DocumentRoot.
Example
ReadmeName FOOTER.html
Example 2
ReadmeName /include/FOOTER.html
See also HeaderName, where this behavior is described in greater
detail.
