When a website doesn't have an index.html file, the navigator displays an auto generated page right ?
Here is an example of what I mean.
This page is very handful to explore a website, but sadly it is only displayed when there is no index.html page.
Is it possible to access such a page on a website, even though index.html exists in the folder ?
I'm using Opera, but I have tried other navigators and none of the common ones seems to do what I want ^^
Thanks for reading
This is not an auto generated page. It is directory browsing of server which can be enabled/disabled through server control panel (or using .htaccess in linux servers).
When you have default document (like index.html) in a folder, the server servs the default document instead of directory browsing. So if you want to let directory browsing when you have index.html, you have to clear the index.hmtl from the list of default documents. This can be done using IIS settings (if you have access to server) or through hosting control panel in website settings (in shared hostings) (or by direct editing of web.config or .htaccess)
the navigator displays an auto generated page
No. This has nothing to do with the browser. The browser displays whatever the server returns. Nothing more, nothing less.
What you're seeing on that link is from the Apache web server. That web server is configured to (and can be configured not to) return a generated directory listing when no default response can be determined.
The "default response" might be index.html, or default.html, or literally anything that the web server is configured to look for by default. (Those are just, well, the common defaults.)
In many modern web applications the concept of a "page" doesn't even really mean the same thing, because things like MVC frameworks don't just browse directories for .html files but instead examine requested routes and generate responses from code.
Is it possible to access such a page on a website, eventho index.html exist in the folder ?
No. Because that "page" doesn't exist. The web server returned that to you because it was configured to. If it's not configured to then that data doesn't exist.
Related
EDIT: Waylan's answer did the trick! Thanks!
I'm trying to zip .html files of docs to send to a customer. The goal is to have the same experience as navigating an actual website.
When opening the .html files, any link that is clicked goes to the parent folder, rather than the specific .html. For example, if I click on the link for the configuration page, it takes me to this parent folder (shown in the picture) with an index.html to the actual page. This is only happening in my local instance when I'm going through the .html files -- not when I'm navigating the built .md (using MkDocs).
macOS Catalina, 10.15.3
MkDocs
Markdown
You probably want to set use_directory_urls: false in your mkdocs.yml config file.
The behavior you are seeing is based on a feature of web servers. If you request a directory (for example /foo/) then the server will return the index page within that directory (/foo/index.html). MkDocs makes use of this feature to provide "pretty URLs" (URLs which do not have file extensions).
Therefore, when building the site, MkDocs will convert every page to an index file within a directory and will also rewrite all of the internal links to point to those locations. So long as the pages are hosted on a server which is configured to serve index pages (most are by default), this is not an issue.
However, if you are browsing the files locally without a web server or happen to be using a server which is not configured to handle index files, then you will see the behavior you are getting. You have two options:
Use a properly configured server.
Turn off the feature with MkDoc' use_directory_urls configuration setting.
To do the latter, add the following to your mkdocs.yml config file:
use_directory_urls: false
Then rebuild the site with mkdocs build. Now your pages will not all be index files.
Note that while this allows you to browse the files without a server (using file:///), due to browser security policies, search will no longer work within a MkDocs site. Therefore, it is recommended that you always use a server. That also explains why the default configuration expects a server.
I'd like to have an html file that organizes certain files scattered throughout my hard drive. For example, I have two files that I would link to:
C:\Programs\sort.mw
C:\Videos\lecture.mp4
The problem is that I'd like the links to function as a shortcut to the file. I've tried the following:
Link 1
Link 2
... but the first link does nothing and the second link opens the file in Chrome, not VLC.
My questions are:
Is there a way to adjust my HTML to treat the links as shortcuts to the files?
If there isn't a way to adjust the HTML, are there any other ways to neatly link to files scattered throughout the hard drive?
My computer runs Windows 7 and my web browser is Chrome.
You need to use the file:/// protocol (yes, that's three slashes) if you want to link to local files.
Link 1
Link 2
These will never open the file in your local applications automatically. That's for security reasons which I'll cover in the last section. If it opens, it will only ever open in the browser. If your browser can display the file, it will, otherwise it will probably ask you if you want to download the file.
You cannot cross from http(s) to the file protocol
Modern versions of many browsers (e.g. Firefox and Chrome) will refuse to cross from the http(s) protocol to the file protocol to prevent malicious behaviour.
This means a webpage hosted on a website somewhere will never be able to link to files on your hard drive. You'll need to open your webpage locally using the file protocol if you want to do this stuff at all.
Why does it get stuck without file:///?
The first part of a URL is the protocol. A protocol is a few letters, then a colon and two slashes. HTTP:// and FTP:// are valid protocols; C:/ isn't and I'm pretty sure it doesn't even properly resemble one.
C:/ also isn't a valid web address. The browser could assume it's meant to be http://c/ with a blank port specified, but that's going to fail.
Your browser may not assume it's referring to a local file. It has little reason to make that assumption because webpages generally don't try to link to peoples' local files.
So if you want to access local files: tell it to use the file protocol.
Why three slashes?
Because it's part of the File URI scheme. You have the option of specifying a host after the first two slashes. If you skip specifying a host it will just assume you're referring to a file on your own PC. This means file:///C:/etc is a shortcut for file://localhost/C:/etc.
These files will still open in your browser and that is good
Your browser will respond to these files the same way they'd respond to the same file anywhere on the internet. These files will not open in your default file handler (e.g. MS Word or VLC Media Player), and you will not be able to do anything like ask File Explorer to open the file's location.
This is an extremely good thing for your security.
Sites in your browser cannot interact with your operating system very well. If a good site could tell your machine to open lecture.mp4 in VLC.exe, a malicious site could tell it to open virus.bat in CMD.exe. Or it could just tell your machine to run a few Uninstall.exe files or open File Explorer a million times.
This may not be convenient for you, but HTML and browser security weren't really designed for what you're doing. If you want to be able to open lecture.mp4 in VLC.exe consider writing a desktop application instead.
If you are running IIS on your PC you can add the directory that you are trying to reach as a Virtual Directory.
To do this you right-click on your Site in ISS and press "Add Virtual Directory".
Name the virtual folder. Point the virtual folder to your folder location on your local PC.
You also have to supply credentials that has privileges to access the specific folder eg. HOSTNAME\username and password.
After that you can access the file in the virtual folder as any other file on your site.
http://sitename.com/virtual_folder_name/filename.fileextension
By the way, this also works with Chrome that otherwise does not accept the file-protocol file://
Hope this helps someone :)
Janky at best
right click </td>
and then right click, select "copy location" option, and then paste into url.
back to 2017:
use URL.createObjectURL( file ) to create local link to file system that user select;
don't forgot to free memory by using URL.revokeObjectURL()
I've a way and work like this:
<'a href="FOLDER_PATH" target="_explorer.exe">Link Text<'/a>
I'd like to have an html file that organizes certain files scattered throughout my hard drive. For example, I have two files that I would link to:
C:\Programs\sort.mw
C:\Videos\lecture.mp4
The problem is that I'd like the links to function as a shortcut to the file. I've tried the following:
Link 1
Link 2
... but the first link does nothing and the second link opens the file in Chrome, not VLC.
My questions are:
Is there a way to adjust my HTML to treat the links as shortcuts to the files?
If there isn't a way to adjust the HTML, are there any other ways to neatly link to files scattered throughout the hard drive?
My computer runs Windows 7 and my web browser is Chrome.
You need to use the file:/// protocol (yes, that's three slashes) if you want to link to local files.
Link 1
Link 2
These will never open the file in your local applications automatically. That's for security reasons which I'll cover in the last section. If it opens, it will only ever open in the browser. If your browser can display the file, it will, otherwise it will probably ask you if you want to download the file.
You cannot cross from http(s) to the file protocol
Modern versions of many browsers (e.g. Firefox and Chrome) will refuse to cross from the http(s) protocol to the file protocol to prevent malicious behaviour.
This means a webpage hosted on a website somewhere will never be able to link to files on your hard drive. You'll need to open your webpage locally using the file protocol if you want to do this stuff at all.
Why does it get stuck without file:///?
The first part of a URL is the protocol. A protocol is a few letters, then a colon and two slashes. HTTP:// and FTP:// are valid protocols; C:/ isn't and I'm pretty sure it doesn't even properly resemble one.
C:/ also isn't a valid web address. The browser could assume it's meant to be http://c/ with a blank port specified, but that's going to fail.
Your browser may not assume it's referring to a local file. It has little reason to make that assumption because webpages generally don't try to link to peoples' local files.
So if you want to access local files: tell it to use the file protocol.
Why three slashes?
Because it's part of the File URI scheme. You have the option of specifying a host after the first two slashes. If you skip specifying a host it will just assume you're referring to a file on your own PC. This means file:///C:/etc is a shortcut for file://localhost/C:/etc.
These files will still open in your browser and that is good
Your browser will respond to these files the same way they'd respond to the same file anywhere on the internet. These files will not open in your default file handler (e.g. MS Word or VLC Media Player), and you will not be able to do anything like ask File Explorer to open the file's location.
This is an extremely good thing for your security.
Sites in your browser cannot interact with your operating system very well. If a good site could tell your machine to open lecture.mp4 in VLC.exe, a malicious site could tell it to open virus.bat in CMD.exe. Or it could just tell your machine to run a few Uninstall.exe files or open File Explorer a million times.
This may not be convenient for you, but HTML and browser security weren't really designed for what you're doing. If you want to be able to open lecture.mp4 in VLC.exe consider writing a desktop application instead.
If you are running IIS on your PC you can add the directory that you are trying to reach as a Virtual Directory.
To do this you right-click on your Site in ISS and press "Add Virtual Directory".
Name the virtual folder. Point the virtual folder to your folder location on your local PC.
You also have to supply credentials that has privileges to access the specific folder eg. HOSTNAME\username and password.
After that you can access the file in the virtual folder as any other file on your site.
http://sitename.com/virtual_folder_name/filename.fileextension
By the way, this also works with Chrome that otherwise does not accept the file-protocol file://
Hope this helps someone :)
Janky at best
right click </td>
and then right click, select "copy location" option, and then paste into url.
back to 2017:
use URL.createObjectURL( file ) to create local link to file system that user select;
don't forgot to free memory by using URL.revokeObjectURL()
I've a way and work like this:
<'a href="FOLDER_PATH" target="_explorer.exe">Link Text<'/a>
I am making my first web site with OSX; this is an internal website for my company.
When the server start, I load pages from a different location, from the one that OSX server used to create my template site (because I do redirects that go on the same IP address, so the pages of the redirect obscure the ones from OSX server). These pages are served by a product called Buildbot (a CI server).
Now, I load the main page from the python directory on my computer, and I would like to avoid to get all the pages for the server there, to not mix them up with the buildbot pages; so I am trying to use the directory that OSX server created for me.
The issue thou, is that I do not know how to link pages...HTML is something that I forgot with time; but I remember that each site starts from a root directory, so the computer is protected by outsiders that may try to force it.
Now, I assume that my root is where the start page is loaded from (in my case is /Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/buildbot-0.8.8-py2.7.egg/buildbot/status/web/templates/), so if I use an href to link to another page, I can just access to this tree.
Which means that my website should be in a folder in this path? I can't seem to access the site where OSX server created the website resource (which in my case is Library/Server/Web/Data/Sites/mySite/).
Has been so long since when I used HTML, so I am quite rusty on the topic, and would appreciate a lot any kind of hint. The site will not be available outside our internal network, so I simply need to link pages and resources scattered on my server HD, and put them on web pages.
Here's how I understand:
Let's say your web root is /root, but you want to have a href to an html file in /dog, for example. Is this correct?
Assuming so, you cannot link an HTML file that is not in the web root, as the browser needs to be able to access it. If you were using a server-side programming language you could do this, but not with HTML.
I'd like to have an html file that organizes certain files scattered throughout my hard drive. For example, I have two files that I would link to:
C:\Programs\sort.mw
C:\Videos\lecture.mp4
The problem is that I'd like the links to function as a shortcut to the file. I've tried the following:
Link 1
Link 2
... but the first link does nothing and the second link opens the file in Chrome, not VLC.
My questions are:
Is there a way to adjust my HTML to treat the links as shortcuts to the files?
If there isn't a way to adjust the HTML, are there any other ways to neatly link to files scattered throughout the hard drive?
My computer runs Windows 7 and my web browser is Chrome.
You need to use the file:/// protocol (yes, that's three slashes) if you want to link to local files.
Link 1
Link 2
These will never open the file in your local applications automatically. That's for security reasons which I'll cover in the last section. If it opens, it will only ever open in the browser. If your browser can display the file, it will, otherwise it will probably ask you if you want to download the file.
You cannot cross from http(s) to the file protocol
Modern versions of many browsers (e.g. Firefox and Chrome) will refuse to cross from the http(s) protocol to the file protocol to prevent malicious behaviour.
This means a webpage hosted on a website somewhere will never be able to link to files on your hard drive. You'll need to open your webpage locally using the file protocol if you want to do this stuff at all.
Why does it get stuck without file:///?
The first part of a URL is the protocol. A protocol is a few letters, then a colon and two slashes. HTTP:// and FTP:// are valid protocols; C:/ isn't and I'm pretty sure it doesn't even properly resemble one.
C:/ also isn't a valid web address. The browser could assume it's meant to be http://c/ with a blank port specified, but that's going to fail.
Your browser may not assume it's referring to a local file. It has little reason to make that assumption because webpages generally don't try to link to peoples' local files.
So if you want to access local files: tell it to use the file protocol.
Why three slashes?
Because it's part of the File URI scheme. You have the option of specifying a host after the first two slashes. If you skip specifying a host it will just assume you're referring to a file on your own PC. This means file:///C:/etc is a shortcut for file://localhost/C:/etc.
These files will still open in your browser and that is good
Your browser will respond to these files the same way they'd respond to the same file anywhere on the internet. These files will not open in your default file handler (e.g. MS Word or VLC Media Player), and you will not be able to do anything like ask File Explorer to open the file's location.
This is an extremely good thing for your security.
Sites in your browser cannot interact with your operating system very well. If a good site could tell your machine to open lecture.mp4 in VLC.exe, a malicious site could tell it to open virus.bat in CMD.exe. Or it could just tell your machine to run a few Uninstall.exe files or open File Explorer a million times.
This may not be convenient for you, but HTML and browser security weren't really designed for what you're doing. If you want to be able to open lecture.mp4 in VLC.exe consider writing a desktop application instead.
If you are running IIS on your PC you can add the directory that you are trying to reach as a Virtual Directory.
To do this you right-click on your Site in ISS and press "Add Virtual Directory".
Name the virtual folder. Point the virtual folder to your folder location on your local PC.
You also have to supply credentials that has privileges to access the specific folder eg. HOSTNAME\username and password.
After that you can access the file in the virtual folder as any other file on your site.
http://sitename.com/virtual_folder_name/filename.fileextension
By the way, this also works with Chrome that otherwise does not accept the file-protocol file://
Hope this helps someone :)
Janky at best
right click </td>
and then right click, select "copy location" option, and then paste into url.
back to 2017:
use URL.createObjectURL( file ) to create local link to file system that user select;
don't forgot to free memory by using URL.revokeObjectURL()
I've a way and work like this:
<'a href="FOLDER_PATH" target="_explorer.exe">Link Text<'/a>