Apache directory listing as json

apache, directory-listing, mod-autoindex

Solution

I looked at the code in apache source in `modules/generators/mod_autoindex.c` and the HTML generation is static. You could rewrite this to output JSON, simply search for all the `ap_rputs` and `ap_rvputs` function calls and replace the HTML with the appropriate JSON. That's seems like a lot of work though.

I think I would do this instead...

In the Apache configuration for this site, change to...

DirectoryIndex ls_json.php index.php index.html

And then place `ls_json.php` script into the any directory for which you want a JSON encoded listing:

// grab the files
$files = scandir(dirname(__FILE__));

// remove "." and ".." (and anything else you might not want)
$output = [];
foreach ($files as $file)
  if (!in_array($file, [".", ".."]))
    $output[] = $file;

// out we go
header("Content-type: application/json");
echo json_encode($output);

Problem

Is it possible to have the directory listing in apache return json instead of html? I'm completely unexperienced with Apache, but I've browsed the documentation for IndexOptions and mod_autoindex. It seems like there's no built in way to configure the output.

Original source