The Fancy Index module makes possible the generation of file listings, like the built-in autoindex module does, but adding a touch of style. This is possible because the module module allows a certain degree of customization of the generated content:

• Custom headers. Either local or stored remotely.
• Custom footers. Either local or stored remotely.
• Add you own CSS style rules.

This module is designed to work with Nginx, a high performance open source web server written by Igor Sysoev.

You will need the sources for Nginx. Any version starting from the 0.7 series onwards will work. Note that the modules might compile with versions in the 0.6 series by applying nginx-0.6-support.patch, but this is unsupported (YMMV).

1. Unpack the Nginx sources:

   $ gunzip -c nginx-?.?.?.tar.gz | tar -xvf -

2. Unpack the sources for the fancy indexing module:

   $ gunzip -c nginx-fancyindex-?.?.?.tar.gz | tar -xvf -

3. Change to the directory which contains the Nginx sources, run the configuration script with the desired options and be sure to put an --add-module flag pointing to the directory which contains the source of the fancy indexing module:

   $ cd nginx-?.?.?
   $ ./configure --add-module=../nginx-fancyindex-?.?.?  [extra desired options]

4. Build and install the software:

   $ make

   And then, as root:

   # make install

5. Configure Nginx by using the modules' configuration directives.

You can test the default built-in style by adding the following lines into a server section in your Nginx configuration file:

location / {
  fancyindex on;              # Enable fancy indexes.
  fancyindex_exact_size off;  # Output human-readable file sizes.
}

Syntax

fancyindex [on | off]

Default

fancyindex off

Context

http, server, location

Description

Enables or disables fancy directory indexes.

Syntax

fancyindex_css_href uri

Default

fancyindex_css_href ""

Context

http, server, location

Description

Allows inserting a link to a CSS style sheet in generated listings. The provided uri parameter will be inserted as-is in a <link> HTML tag. The link is inserted after the built-in CSS rules, so you can override the default styles.

Syntax

fancyindex_exact_size [on | off]

Default

fancyindex_exact_size on

Context

http, server, location

Description

Defines how to represent file sizes in the directory listing; either accurately, or rounding off to the kilobyte, the megabyte and the gigabyte.

Syntax

fancyindex_footer path

Default

fancyindex_footer ""

Context

http, server, location

Description

Specifies which file should be inserted at the foot of directory listings. If set to an empty string, the default footer supplied by the module will be sent.

Syntax

fancyindex_header path

Default

fancyindex_header ""

Context

http, server, location

Description

Specifies which file should be inserted at the head of directory listings. If set to an empty string, the default header supplied by the module will be sent.

Syntax

fancyindex_ignore string1 [string2 [... stringN]]

Default

No default.

Context

http, server, location

Description

Specifies a list of file names which will be not be shown in generated listings. If Nginx was built with PCRE support strings are interpreted as regular expressions.

Syntax

fancyindex_localtime [on | off]

Default

fancyindex_localtime off

Context

http, server, location

Description

Enables showing file times as local time. Default is “off” (GMT time).