Add configurable DirectoryIndex to http.server #76809

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1. epaulson commented on Jan 23, 2018

   

   epaulsonmannequin

   on Jan 23, 2018

   MannequinAuthor

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   In http.server and SimpleHTTPRequestHandler - the send_head function is hard-coded to treat index.html and index.htm as files to return in a directory - if neither of those files are present, it lists the directory.

   It would be very nice to be able to specify other files to use as a directory index, similar to the DirectoryIndex directive from Apache.

   I think it'd be straight forward to add some kind of list you could set, just like you can modify extensions_map to include other types of MIME types.

   Would it be OK to just add a directory_index list with index.html and index.htm on by default that people could do like
   Handler.directory_index.append("index.htmlx") in their setup? Or would such an API be better with some kind of helper?
2. epaulson

   added

   3.7 (EOL)end of lifeend of life

   stdlibStandard Library Python modules in the Lib/ directoryStandard Library Python modules in the Lib/ directory

   on Jan 23, 2018
3. berkerpeksag commented on May 31, 2019

   

   berkerpeksag

   on May 31, 2019

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   Thank you for the report and for the patch!

   What's your use case? I understand the need for it for httpd, but as someone who uses http.server daily, I can't think of a use case that I'd find this feature useful. Note that even the example in your message and the test in the patch use artificial file names :)

   Handler.directory_index.append("index.htmlx") API doesn't look good to me. It would be nice to subclass it, but that would make http.server less usable (especially if you run it via "python -m http.server")

   I suggest closing this as 'rejected' (sorry!)
4. epaulson commented on May 31, 2019

   

   epaulsonmannequin

   on May 31, 2019

   MannequinAuthor

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   I think my use case was Sharepoint and static site generators - Sharepoint can serve a tree of .aspx files as raw HTML, but maddeningly not .html files. The site generator we used spit out a fairly complicated site where the internal links point at directories counting on the fact that it is served correctly by the directoryindex handler. The site generator spits out .aspx but http.server can't serve them.

   A directory full of .xhtml files would have similar problems, which certainly still exist in the wild.

   The example in the test was named index.test because it's creating files on the disk in the test, shared by other parts of the test, and I wanted to be clear about what it was. It was not intended to be an example use case.
5. ezio-melotti

   transferred this issue fromon Apr 10, 2022
6. serhiy-storchaka

   added this to HTTP issueson Jul 3, 2026
7. github-project-automation

   moved this to Todo in HTTP issueson Jul 3, 2026
8. soreavis commented on Jul 13, 2026

   

   soreavis

   on Jul 13, 2026

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   This looks resolved — index_pages was added to SimpleHTTPRequestHandler in 3.12 via gh-91219, and it's a documented class attribute you can override:

   class Handler(http.server.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler):
       index_pages = ("index.aspx",)

   That covers the .aspx and .xhtml cases from this thread. Worth closing this and #5308 as superseded?
9. serhiy-storchaka

   closed this as a duplicateof SimpleHTTPRequestHandler has hard coded index page list. #91219 on Aug 13, 2026
10. github-project-automation

    moved this from Todo to Done in HTTP issueson Aug 13, 2026