Custom autoindex pages with nginx

Using XSLT is possible to customize autoindex's xml output using the xslt module:

location / {
    autoindex on;
    autoindex_format xml;
    xslt_stylesheet /path/to/custom.xslt
}

It's what I did on this project: ngx-superbindex


Same answer as gibatronic: harness the power of xslt! Have a look at this sample xslt file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:template match="/">
    <html>
    <body>
        <h3>Dafshabbat</h3>
        <table border="0">
        <tr bgcolor="#9acd32">
            <th>name</th>
            <th>size</th>
            <th>date</th>
        </tr>
        <xsl:for-each select="list/*">
        <xsl:sort select="@mtime"/>

            <xsl:variable name="name">
                <xsl:value-of select="."/>
            </xsl:variable>
            <xsl:variable name="size">
                <xsl:if test="string-length(@size) &gt; 0">
                        <xsl:if test="number(@size) &gt; 0">
                            <xsl:choose>
                                    <xsl:when test="round(@size div 1024) &lt; 1"><xsl:value-of select="@size" /></xsl:when>
                                    <xsl:when test="round(@size div 1048576) &lt; 1"><xsl:value-of select="format-number((@size div 1024), '0.0')" />K</xsl:when>
                                    <xsl:otherwise><xsl:value-of select="format-number((@size div 1048576), '0.00')" />M</xsl:otherwise>
                            </xsl:choose>
                        </xsl:if>
                </xsl:if>
            </xsl:variable>
            <xsl:variable name="date">
                <xsl:value-of select="substring(@mtime,9,2)"/>-<xsl:value-of select="substring(@mtime,6,2)"/>-<xsl:value-of select="substring(@mtime,1,4)"/><xsl:text> </xsl:text>
                <xsl:value-of select="substring(@mtime,12,2)"/>:<xsl:value-of select="substring(@mtime,15,2)"/>:<xsl:value-of select="substring(@mtime,18,2)"/>
            </xsl:variable>

        <tr>
            <td><a href="{$name}"><xsl:value-of select="."/></a></td>
            <td align="right"><xsl:value-of select="$size"/></td>
            <td><xsl:value-of select="$date"/></td>
        </tr>

        </xsl:for-each>
        </table>
    </body>
    </html>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

What I particularly like is the ability to sort by date, defined here with: <xsl:sort select="@mtime"/>

It certainly requires more effort to setup compared to adding a couple of directives in a .htaccess file. And, xml files are cumbersome to write and read. However, the customization potential is great and very nice to have!

See an introductory tutorial on w3schools.


turns out you can add valid html with the http addition module.

i don't claim to understand it fully, but there's a repository that does exactly what you want, so you can try and go from there.

Edit (2019):

After looking into it, this is actually a rather simple task.

  • create a hidden folder, e.g. .assets, so autoindex won't display it.
  • inside it, create an html file containing whatever you want to append to your webpage.
  • then simply add add_after_body /.assets/my_html_file.html to your nginx rules. ta-da!

Note that, according to the docs, this module is not part of a default compilation. I found that the nginx package on ubuntu has it, though.

Tags:

Nginx

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