I was learning about HTML domains and paths in my computer-science class. However, I have a question. What happens if you only specify a domain, such as apple.com instead of specifying a path? Does the page automatically give you the index file or something?
Thanks :)
That entirely depends on what the web server is configured to do. What you’re doing is you’re requesting a URL from a web server via HTTP. That does not inherently have anything to do with files. The web server can respond to the request in any way it wants.
But yes, most typically the average web server will look for a file named something like index.html in its webroot folder and return it.
yes, there is the default file that is returned if no path is provided
From Apache documentation
Typically, a document called index.html will be served when a directory is requested without a file name being specified. For example, if DocumentRoot is set to /var/www/html and a request is made for http://www.example.com/work/, the file /var/www/html/work/index.html will be served to the client.
From IIS documentation:
Default documents are enabled by default, and IIS 7 defines the following default document files in the ApplicationHost.config file as server-wide defaults: Default.htm, Default.asp, Index.htm, Index.html, Iisstart.htm.
(If you install ASP.NET on your Web server, the installation process will add the Default.aspx file to this list.)
Related
Is it possible to automatically load index.html on a system folder without using XAMPP, IIS or similar?
It is for a school project and I can't use them, so I have to open the file putting the path (C:/...) into the address bar.
I know I could use .htaccess, but I don't know what to write and if it gets read without any web server solutions!
This can get a little tricky... but is possible without any "administrator" privileges, nor without installing anything.
Download Python 3.8.2 - Windows x86-64 embeddable zip file
Create a folder on "python" on the c:\
Extract the "Zip" file into this folder
Change the folder name from "python-3.8.2-embed-amd64" to "python_src"
Create a folder named "python_html"
The folder structure should look like:
c:\python\
c:\python\python_src\
c:\python\python_html\
Create a file named "webserver.py" in the "c:\python\python_html" folder
Place the following code into that file:
#webserver.py
import http.server
import socketserver
PORT = 80
Handler = http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler
with socketserver.TCPServer(("", PORT), Handler) as httpd:
print("serving at port", PORT)
httpd.serve_forever()
Save and close the file
Create index.html file in the "python_html" folder and place the following code in that file:
<html>
<head>
<title>Web Title</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Python Web Server File</h1>
<p>Congratulations! The HTTP Server is working!</p>
</body>
</html>
Open the "Command Prompt" and type the following commands
cd\
cd python\python_html\
c:\python\python_src\python ./webserver.py
Open a web browser and navigate to "http://localhost/"
Once you have confirmed this works, you can build an entire website within that "python_html" folder. As long as you don't close the command prompt it will continue acting as a "Web Server".
I know I could use .htaccess
.htaccess is an Apache (Web Server) config file, so unless you have Apache installed (ie. the "A" in XAMPP) then you can't use that. (If .htaccess was available then index.html would likely load automatically anyway.)
On Apache, being able to load index.html by default when requesting a directory requires mod_dir (an Apache module). In this case, mod_dir issues an internal subrequest for the DirectoryIndex - this all requires additional processes.
I can't install extensions... I have to open the file on my school computer
If you can't install anything then you can't do this I'm afraid. You appear to be limited to direct file requests.
When using a webserver (such as Apache or IIS) then you have a differentiation between a URL and a filesystem path. The webserver maps the URL to a filesystem path. Without a webserver you don't have that abstraction.
There are lighter webservers, other than Apache and IIS, but you need to install something extra.
Just give your file(s) meaningful names (ie. not index.html) and use those instead? eg. fox-project.html
I have http://192.168.230.237:20080 Server
file located on "/etc/Jay/log/jay.txt"
I tried with "http://192.168.230.237:20080/etc/Jay/log/jay.txt" this link gives me "404 NOT Found"
Here I can I link my file to link
Your HTTP server will have a configuration option somewhere (Apache HTTPD calls it DocumentRoot) which determines where http://example.com/ maps onto the filesystem of the computer.
Commonly this will be /var/www/.
Unless you change it to / (which would expose your entire filesystem over HTTP and is very much not recommended), you can't access arbitrary files on the computer.
/etc/ is used to store configuration information for software installed on the computer. It should almost never be exposed outside the computer.
The best solution to your problem is probably:
Look at the configuration of your HTTP server and identify the document root (e.g. /var/www/)
Move your website files to that directory
If you really want to expose files under /etc via HTTP then you could also change the document root.
Your webserver might also support features like Apache HTTPD's Alias directive which allows you to map a URL onto a file that can be outside the DocumentRoot.
Is there a way to have a file other thing index.html or index.md served as a folder's default file? Specifically, I'm looking to keep my .json file extention, but have it reference-able as /api-docs/myapi/ instead of /api-docs/myapi/myapi.json.
This configuration is mostly in your web server. You can set the files for the server to look for to index.json (as well as index.html and index.htm which are common on most servers). For example, this can be configured on nginx by adding this to your server block:
index index.json index.html index.htm;
If nginx gets a request for /some/folder, it will try to serve /some/folder/index.json, /some/folder/index.html, /some/folder/index.htm then your 404 page with this configuration.
You can use permalink in your yaml front matter :
Permalink: api-doc/myapi/myapi.json
Edit: As #SAMdroid pointed it, I misunderstood the question, and as he says in is answer, it's a server configuration matter. But, it's sadly not possible to change default served page on Github Pages.
Your json can only be reached at api-doc/myapi/myapi.json
Any ideas to why when I go to my site URL it's not pulling the index page? The index page is in the root directory. This was working before but for some reason it has stopped unexpectedly.
devoffpod.purplebottlemedia.com this should pull the site up but doesn't unless I specify the /index.html at the end.
Your default document settings are set to load index.php either before or instead index.html. You'll need to change that. If you are in a shared hosting environment, look at the community help and support section. If you are hosting this yourself in Windows, open IIS and then default document. IIS allows multiple default documents, so if you want index.html to load instead of index.php, make sure index.html is at the top of the list. (Or just before index.php)
I am not sure how to do it on a Linux based server or Apache, but I am sure there are plenty of online forms for changing the default document settings.
I am doing some basic HTML exercises on a Mac OS 10.6.6.
Say I am here:
rootfolder/index.html
and I want to go here:
rootfolder/subfolder/index.html
I understand I can use the relative path to make a link:
link to subfolder
^ this works for me in my browser.
And if I wanted to shorten the href, I could just do this:
link to subfolder
When I click the short version in my browser, the link takes me to the folder on my desktop (not to the page in my browser)
I'm wondering, do the files need to be in a web host environment for
the short version to work in a browser?
When /bob/ => /bob/index.html works, it is generally because the server has listed it as its directory index, e.g. with Apache...
DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
...meaning in the request of a folder, it will first look up to see if an index.html or index.php exists (in that order).
So if you are running it from the folders of your local filesytem (i.e. on the file: protocol), it has no server and does not know that a blank directory should request index.html.
The serving of index.html (or index.cgi or default.asp or whatever) when requesting a url that points to a directory is done by the server, not the browser. It is usually done as a result of configuration setting.
It's neither a property of HTML nor a property of urls.
If your browser doesn't serve index.html — and I don't know any that do — then you've answered your own question.
Mac OS comes with Apache (the most commonly-used open-source web server) pre-installed. You can set it up by going to System Preferences, choosing the "Sharing" preference pane, and then checking the box to turn on Personal Web Sharing.
Once you've turned on Personal Web Sharing, http://addressofyourcomputer/~yourusername/ will point to the Sites directory in your user's folder in Mac OS (i.e., /Users/yourusername/Sites/). With Apache running, if you go to http://addressofyourcomputer/~yourusername/subfolder/, it will in fact serve up /Users/yourusername/Sites/subfolder/index.html if there is an index.html file in that subfolder.
Without turning on Personal Web Sharing, though, there is no server running, and so your browser is really just directly accessing your computer's filesystem. As a result, when you ask for a folder, it literally returns you that folder, whereas Apache server knows the convention that /subfolder/ is really a request for /subfolder/index.html and will re-direct you accordingly.
The default page setting/redirection works only on web servers. The browser do not have intelligence(?) for such redirection. So the second option will not work.