Apache Module mod_dir

DirectoryIndex Directive

The DirectoryIndex directive sets the list of resources to look for, when the client requests an index of the directory by specifying a / at the end of the directory name. Local-url is the (%-encoded) URL of a document on the server relative to the requested directory; it is usually the name of a file in the directory. Several URLs may be given, in which case the server will return the first one that it finds. If none of the resources exist and the Indexes option is set, the server will generate its own listing of the directory.

then a request for http://example.com/docs/ would return http://example.com/docs/index.html if it exists, or would list the directory if it did not.

Note that the documents do not need to be relative to the directory;

would cause the CGI script /cgi-bin/index.pl to be executed if neither index.html or index.txt existed in a directory.

Note: Multiple DirectoryIndex directives within the same context will add to the list of resources to look for rather than replace:

# Example A: Set index.html as an index page, then add index.php to that list as well.
<Directory /foo>
    DirectoryIndex index.html
    DirectoryIndex index.php
</Directory>

# Example B: This is identical to example A, except it's done with a single directive.
<Directory /foo>
    DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
</Directory>

DirectorySlash Directive

The DirectorySlash directive determines whether mod_dir should fixup URLs pointing to a directory or not.

Typically if a user requests a resource without a trailing slash, which points to a directory, mod_dir redirects him to the same resource, but with trailing slash for some good reasons:

• The user is finally requesting the canonical URL of the resource
• mod_autoindex works correctly. Since it doesn't emit the path in the link, it would point to the wrong path.
• DirectoryIndex will be evaluated only for directories requested with trailing slash.
• Relative URL references inside html pages will work correctly.

If you don't want this effect and the reasons above don't apply to you, you can turn off the redirect as shown below. However, be aware that there are possible security implications to doing this.

FallbackResource Directive

Use this to set a handler for any URL that doesn't map to anything in your filesystem, and would otherwise return HTTP 404 (Not Found). For example

will cause requests for non-existent files to be handled by not-404.php, while requests for files that exist are unaffected.

It is frequently desirable to have a single file or resource handle all requests to a particular directory, except those requests that correspond to an existing file or script. This is often referred to as a 'front controller.'

In earlier versions of httpd, this effect typically required mod_rewrite, and the use of the -f and -d tests for file and directory existence. This now requires only one line of configuration.

Existing files, such as images, css files, and so on, will be served normally.

Use the disabled argument to disable that feature if inheritance from a parent directory is not desired.

In a sub-URI, such as http://example.com/blog/ this sub-URI has to be supplied as local-url: