Apache Module mod_autoindex
Description: | Generates directory indexes, automatically, similar to the Unix ls command or the Win32 dir shell command |
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Status: | Base |
ModuleIdentifier: | autoindex_module |
SourceFile: | mod_autoindex.c |
Summary
The index of a directory can come from one of two sources:
- A file located in that directory, typically called
index.html
. TheDirectoryIndex
directive sets the name of the file or files to be used. This is controlled bymod_dir
. - Otherwise, a listing generated by the server. The other directives control the format of this listing. The
AddIcon
,AddIconByEncoding
andAddIconByType
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 bymod_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 the 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".
Autoindex Request Query Arguments
Various query string arguments are available to give the client some control over the ordering of the directory listing, as well as what files are listed. If you do not wish to give the client this control, the IndexOptions IgnoreClient
option disables that functionality.
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 Directive
Description: | Alternate text to display for a file, instead of an icon selected by filename |
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Syntax: | AddAlt string file [file] ... |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
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.
AddAlt "PDF file" *.pdf AddAlt Compressed *.gz *.zip *.Z
AddAltByEncoding Directive
Description: | Alternate text to display for a file instead of an icon selected by MIME-encoding |
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Syntax: | AddAltByEncoding string MIME-encoding [MIME-encoding] ... |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
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.
AddAltByEncoding gzip x-gzip
AddAltByType Directive
Description: | Alternate text to display for a file, instead of an icon selected by MIME content-type |
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Syntax: | AddAltByType string MIME-type [MIME-type] ... |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
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.
AddAltByType 'plain text' text/plain
AddDescription Directive
Description: | Description to display for a file |
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Syntax: | AddDescription string file [file] ... |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
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 ("
).
AddDescription "The planet Mars" mars.gif AddDescription "My friend Marshall" friends/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.
Since the File argument may be a partial file name, please remember that a too-short partial filename may match unintended files. For example, le.html
will match the file le.html
but will also match the file example.html
. In the event that there may be ambiguity, use as complete a filename as you can, but keep in mind that the first match encountered will be used, and order your list of AddDescription
directives accordingly.
See the DescriptionWidth IndexOptions
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.
Arguments with path information
Absolute paths are not currently supported and do not match anything at runtime. Arguments with relative path information, which would normally only be used in htaccess context, are implicitly prefixed with '*/' to avoid matching partial directory names.
AddIcon Directive
Description: | Icon to display for a file selected by name |
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Syntax: | AddIcon icon name [name] ... |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
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, a fully qualified remote URL, 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.
^^BLANKICON^^
is only used for formatting, and so is unnecessary if you're using IndexOptions HTMLTable
.
#Examples AddIcon (IMG,/icons/image.png) .gif .jpg .png AddIcon /icons/dir.png ^^DIRECTORY^^ AddIcon /icons/backup.png *~
AddIconByType
should be used in preference to AddIcon
, when possible.
AddIconByEncoding Directive
Description: | Icon to display next to files selected by MIME content-encoding |
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Syntax: | AddIconByEncoding icon MIME-encoding [MIME-encoding] ... |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
This sets the icon to display next to files with FancyIndexing
. Icon is either a (%-escaped) relative URL to the icon, a fully qualified remote URL, or of the format (alttext,url)
where alttext is the text tag given for an icon for non-graphical browsers.
MIME-encoding is a valid content-encoding, such as x-compress
.
AddIconByEncoding /icons/compress.png x-compress
AddIconByType Directive
Description: | Icon to display next to files selected by MIME content-type |
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Syntax: | AddIconByType icon MIME-type [MIME-type] ... |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
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, a fully qualified remote URL, 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.
AddIconByType (IMG,/icons/image.png) image/*
DefaultIcon Directive
Description: | Icon to display for files when no specific icon is configured |
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Syntax: | DefaultIcon url-path |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
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, or a fully qualified remote URL.
DefaultIcon /icon/unknown.png
HeaderName Directive
Description: | Name of the file that will be inserted at the top of the index listing |
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Syntax: | HeaderName filename |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
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.
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
.
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 Options
MultiViews
is in effect. If filename resolves to a static text/html
document (not a CGI script) and either one of the options
Includes
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.
See also
IndexHeadInsert Directive
Description: | Inserts text in the HEAD section of an index page. |
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Syntax: | IndexHeadInsert "markup ..." |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
The IndexHeadInsert
directive specifies a string to insert in the <head> section of the HTML generated for the index page.
IndexHeadInsert "<link rel=\"sitemap\" href=\"/sitemap.html\">"
IndexIgnore Directive
Description: | Adds to the list of files to hide when listing a directory |
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Syntax: | IndexIgnore file [file] ... |
Default: | IndexIgnore "." |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
The IndexIgnore
directive adds to the list of files to hide when listing a directory. File is a shell-style wildcard expression or full filename. Multiple IndexIgnore directives add to the list, rather than replacing the list of ignored files. By default, the list contains .
(the current directory).
IndexIgnore .??* *~ *# HEADER* README* RCS CVS *,v *,t
Regular Expressions
This directive does not currently work in configuration sections that have regular expression arguments, such as <DirectoryMatch>
IndexIgnoreReset Directive
Description: | Empties the list of files to hide when listing a directory |
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Syntax: | IndexIgnoreReset ON|OFF |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
Compatibility: | 2.3.10 and later |
The IndexIgnoreReset
directive removes any files ignored by IndexIgnore
otherwise inherited from other configuration sections.
<Directory "/var/www"> IndexIgnore *.bak .??* *~ *# HEADER* README* RCS CVS *,v *,t </Directory> <Directory "/var/www/backups"> IndexIgnoreReset ON IndexIgnore .??* *# HEADER* README* RCS CVS *,v *,t </Directory>
Review the default configuration for a list of patterns that you might want to explicitly ignore after using this directive.
IndexOptions Directive
Description: | Various configuration settings for directory indexing |
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Syntax: | IndexOptions [+|-]option [[+|-]option] ... |
Default: | By default, no options are enabled. |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
The IndexOptions
directive specifies the behavior of the directory indexing. Option can be one of
- AddAltClass
- Adds an additional CSS class declaration to each row of the directory listing table when
IndexOptions HTMLTable
is in effect and anIndexStyleSheet
is defined. Rather than the standardeven
andodd
classes that would otherwise be applied to each row of the table, a class ofeven-ALT
orodd-ALT
where ALT is either the standard alt text associated with the file style (eg. snd, txt, img, etc) or the alt text defined by one of the variousAddAlt*
directives. - Charset=character-set (Apache HTTP Server 2.0.61 and later)
- The
Charset
keyword allows you to specify the character set of the generated page. The default isUTF-8
on Windows and Mac OS X, andISO-8859-1
elsewhere. (It depends on whether the underlying file system uses Unicode filenames or not.)IndexOptions Charset=UTF-8
- DescriptionWidth=[n | *]
- The
DescriptionWidth
keyword allows you to specify the width of the description column in characters. -
-DescriptionWidth
(or unset) allowsmod_autoindex
to calculate the best width. -
DescriptionWidth=n
fixes the column width to n bytes wide. -
DescriptionWidth=*
grows the column to the width necessary to accommodate the longest description string. See the section onAddDescription
for dangers inherent in truncating descriptions. - FancyIndexing
- This turns on fancy indexing of directories.
- FoldersFirst
- 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, subdirectoryZed
will be listed before subdirectoryBeta
, which will be listed before normal filesGamma
andAlpha
. This option only has an effect ifFancyIndexing
is also enabled. - HTMLTable
- This option with
FancyIndexing
constructs a simple table for the fancy directory listing. It is necessary for utf-8 enabled platforms or if file names or description text will alternate between left-to-right and right-to-left reading order. - IconsAreLinks
- This makes the icons part of the anchor for the filename, for fancy indexing.
- IconHeight[=pixels]
- Presence of this option, when used with
IconWidth
, will cause the server to includeheight
andwidth
attributes in theimg
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 httpd software. This option only has an effect ifFancyIndexing
is also enabled. - IconWidth[=pixels]
- Presence of this option, when used with
IconHeight
, will cause the server to includeheight
andwidth
attributes in theimg
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 httpd software. - IgnoreCase
- 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). - IgnoreClient
- This option causes
mod_autoindex
to ignore all query variables from the client, including sort order (impliesSuppressColumnSorting
.) - NameWidth=[n | *]
- The
NameWidth
keyword allows you to specify the width of the filename column in bytes. -
-NameWidth
(or unset) allowsmod_autoindex
to calculate the best width, but only up to 20 bytes wide. -
NameWidth=n
fixes the column width to n bytes wide. -
NameWidth=*
grows the column to the necessary width. - ScanHTMLTitles
- 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 thetitle
element. This is CPU and disk intensive. - ShowForbidden
- If specified, Apache httpd will show files normally hidden because the subrequest returned
HTTP_UNAUTHORIZED
orHTTP_FORBIDDEN
- SuppressColumnSorting
- If specified, Apache httpd 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. However, query string arguments which are appended to the URL will still be honored. That behavior is controlled by
IndexOptions IgnoreClient
. - SuppressDescription
- 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 theDescriptionWidth
index option to limit the size of the description column. This option only has an effect ifFancyIndexing
is also enabled. - SuppressHTMLPreamble
- 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). TheSuppressHTMLPreamble
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. If you also specify aReadmeName
, and if that file exists, The closing </body></html> tags are also ommitted from the output, under the assumption that you'll likely put those closing tags in that file. - SuppressIcon
- This will suppress the icon in fancy indexing listings. Combining both
SuppressIcon
andSuppressRules
yields proper HTML 3.2 output, which by the final specification prohibitsimg
andhr
elements from thepre
block (used to format FancyIndexed listings.) - SuppressLastModified
- This will suppress the display of the last modification date, in fancy indexing listings. This option only has an effect if
FancyIndexing
is also enabled. - SuppressRules
- This will suppress the horizontal rule lines (
hr
elements) in directory listings. Combining bothSuppressIcon
andSuppressRules
yields proper HTML 3.2 output, which by the final specification prohibitsimg
andhr
elements from thepre
block (used to format FancyIndexed listings.) This option only has an effect ifFancyIndexing
is also enabled. - SuppressSize
- This will suppress the file size in fancy indexing listings. This option only has an effect if
FancyIndexing
is also enabled. - TrackModified
- This returns the
Last-Modified
andETag
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 aHEAD
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 theLast-Modified
header on all Unix platforms. If this is a concern, leave this option disabled. - Type=MIME content-type (Apache HTTP Server 2.0.61 and later)
- The
Type
keyword allows you to specify the MIME content-type of the generated page. The default is text/html.IndexOptions Type=text/plain
- VersionSort (Apache HTTP Server 2.0a3 and later)
- 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.Example:
foo-1.7 foo-1.7.2 foo-1.7.12 foo-1.8.2 foo-1.8.2a foo-1.12
If the number starts with a zero, then it is considered to be a fraction:
foo-1.001 foo-1.002 foo-1.030 foo-1.04
- XHTML (Apache HTTP Server 2.0.49 and later)
- The
XHTML
keyword forcesmod_autoindex
to emit XHTML 1.0 code instead of HTML 3.2. This option only has an effect ifFancyIndexing
is also enabled.
- Incremental IndexOptions
-
Be aware of how multiple
IndexOptions
are handled.- Multiple
IndexOptions
directives for a single directory are now merged together. The result of:<Directory "/foo"> IndexOptions HTMLTable IndexOptions SuppressColumnsorting </Directory>
will be the equivalent of
IndexOptions HTMLTable SuppressColumnsorting
- 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:IndexOptions +ScanHTMLTitles -IconsAreLinks FancyIndexing IndexOptions +SuppressSize
The net effect is equivalent to
IndexOptions FancyIndexing +SuppressSize
, because the unprefixedFancyIndexing
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. - Multiple
IndexOrderDefault Directive
Description: | Sets the default ordering of the directory index |
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Syntax: | IndexOrderDefault Ascending|Descending Name|Date|Size|Description |
Default: | IndexOrderDefault Ascending Name |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
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, if desired, prevent the client from reordering the list by also adding the SuppressColumnSorting
index option to remove the sort link from the top of the column, along with the IgnoreClient
index option to prevent them from manually adding sort options to the query string in order to override your ordering preferences.
IndexStyleSheet Directive
Description: | Adds a CSS stylesheet to the directory index |
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Syntax: | IndexStyleSheet url-path |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
The IndexStyleSheet
directive sets the name of the file that will be used as the CSS for the index listing.
IndexStyleSheet "/css/style.css"
Using this directive in conjunction with IndexOptions HTMLTable
adds a number of CSS classes to the resulting HTML. The entire table is given a CSS id of indexlist
and the following classes are associated with the various parts of the listing:
Class | Definition |
---|---|
tr.indexhead | Header row of listing |
th.indexcolicon and td.indexcolicon | Icon column |
th.indexcolname and td.indexcolname | File name column |
th.indexcollastmod and td.indexcollastmod | Last modified column |
th.indexcolsize and td.indexcolsize | File size column |
th.indexcoldesc and td.indexcoldesc | Description column |
tr.breakrow | Horizontal rule at the bottom of the table |
tr.odd and tr.even | Alternating even and odd rows |
ReadmeName Directive
Description: | Name of the file that will be inserted at the end of the index listing |
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Syntax: | ReadmeName filename |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess |
Override: | Indexes |
Status: | Base |
Module: | mod_autoindex |
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, as in example 2, it will be taken to be relative to the DocumentRoot
.
# Example 1 ReadmeName FOOTER.html
# Example 2 ReadmeName /include/FOOTER.html
See also HeaderName
, where this behavior is described in greater detail.
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