Directory Browsing

By default references to directories which don't include a welcome page cause httpd to generate a hypertext view of the directory listing. There are numerous configuration directives controlling this feature:

DirAccess - Enable/Selective/Disable directory listings
DirReadme - Configure/disable README-feature
FTPDirInfo - Configure/disable FTP messages in FTP listings
Controlling the appearance of directory listings:
- DirShowIcons - Show icons in directory listings
- DirShowDate - show last-modified date
- DirShowSize - show file sizes
- DirShowBytes - show byte count for small files
- DirShowDescription - show descriptions for files
- DirShowHTMLTitles - show HTML titles in description field
- DirShowMaxDescriptionLength - maximum description length
- DirShowBrackets - use brackets around ALTernative text used instead of an icon
- DirShowMinLength - minimum width to reserve for filenames
- DirShowMaxLength - maximum width to reserve for filenames
- DirShowHidden - show also files starting with a dot (hidden Unix files)
- DirShowOwner - show owner of the file
- DirShowGroup - show group of the file
- DirShowMode - show permissions of the file
- DirShowCase - do sorting in a case-sensitive manner
- DirAddHref - make listing icons linked to CGI scripts
Icons:
- AddIcon - bind icon URL to a MIME Content-Type or Content-Encoding
- AddBlankIcon - icon URL used in the heading of the listing to align it
- AddUnknownIcon - icon URL for unknown file types
- AddDirIcon - icon URL for directories
- AddParentIcon - icon URL for parent directory

Controlling Directory Browsing

DirAccess On: Enable directory browsing in all directories (which are not forbidden by rules). Synonym with -dy command line option. Default.
DirAccess Off: Disable directory browsing. Synonym with -dn command line option.
DirAccess Selective: Enable selective directory browsing - only directories containing the file .www_browsable are allowed. Synonym with -ds command line option.

README Feature

DirReadme Top: For any browsable directeory containing a README file, include the text at the top of the directory listing. Synonym with -dt command line option. Default.
DirReadme Bottom: Same as previous, but contents of README appear on the bottom. Synonym with -db command line option.
DirReadme Off: Disables the README inclusion feature. Synonym with -dr command line option.

FTPDirInfo

FTPDirInfo Top: FTP messages from FTP servers get placed on top of the FTP directory listing. Default.
FTPDirInfo Bottom: FTP messages go to the bottom of FTP listings.
FTPDirInfo Off: FTP messages are not shown.

Controlling The Look of Directory Listings

The following On/Off directives control how the directory listings look like. The default is to show icons, use brackets around ALTernaltive text, show last-modified, size and description, allow filename field width vary between 15-22 characters, reserve 25 characters for description, and use HTML titles as descriptions for HTML files.

DirShowIcons

Generate inlined image calls in front of each line. Icons visualize the content-type of the file, and they are defined by AddIcon configuration directive. Default.

DirShowDate

Show last modification date. Default.

DirShowSize

Show the size of files. Default.

DirShowBytes

By default files smaller than 1K are shown as just 1K. Setting this directive to On will cause the exact byte count to appear.

DirShowDescription

Show description if available. Default.

At the time of release of 2.17 there was no consensus about where the descriptions come from, and the mechanism is currently undocumented. For HTML files description it the TITLE element; for other files the description field is left empty.

DirShowHTMLTitles

Scan the first few characters in each HTML file to find the HTML TITLE element, and use that for the description. Default.

DirShowMaxDescriptionLenght

The maximum number of characters to show in the description field.

DirShowBrackets

Use brackets around ALTernative text used by browsers not capable of displaying images. Default.

DirShowHidden

Show hidden Unix files (the ones starting with a dot).

DirShowOwner

Show the owner of the file.

DirShowGroup

Show the group of the file.

DirShowMode

Show the permissions of files.

DirShowCase

Sort entries in a case-sensitive manner, i.e. all capital letters before lower-case letters.

DirAddHref

[Version 3.0pre6 and newer] The DirAddHref directive can be used to make the icon in HTTP directory listings sensitive for files which end in specified suffixes. The action is a CGI script call that can produce e.g. a listing of the contents of a tar file.

Example

        DirAddHref  /cgi-bin/unarch  .zip  .tar

This would cause the icon for ZIP and TAR files to be linked to the unarch CGI script (note that this is really a webmaster-supplied CGI script, not the normal unarch program) with the virtual URL path in PATH_INFO environment variable and the physical file path in PATH_TRANSLATED.

WARNING: Don't use this directive on a proxy!

Filename Length

There is a minimum and maximum width for the filename field. Entries longer than the maximum value will be truncated. Default values are 15 and 25, and they can be changed with these directives:

DirShowMinLength num: At least this amount of characters is always reserved for filenames. If the longest filename in the directory is longer than num the field will be extended, but no more than the maximum limit (see next directive).
DirShowMaxLength num: Filenames longer than num will be truncated to fit in length.

Example

The default values would be set by saying:

        DirShowMinLength  15
        DirShowMaxLength  25

httpd@w3.org, July 1995