golang static stop index.html redirection

package main

import (
  "log"
  "net/http"
)

func main() {
  fs := http.FileServer(http.Dir("."))
  http.Handle("/", fs)

  log.Println("Listening...")
  http.ListenAndServe(":3000", nil)
}

So I have a index.html file and want server to stop showing it.

The docs for FileServer state that:

> As a special case, the returned file server redirects any request
> ending in "/index.html" to the same path, without the final
> "index.html".

So /index.html is redirected to /, /foo/bar/index.html is redirected to /foo/bar/.

To avoid this register an additional handler for the special case.

http.HandleFunc("/index.html", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    f, err := os.Open("index.html")
    if err != nil {
        // handle error
        return
    }
    http.ServeContent(w, r, "index.html", time.Now(), f)
})

Please note I'm using ServeContent insead of ServeFile because ServeFile handles /index.html requests the same way as FileServer.

There's no redirection going on, the default file to render when requesting a directory is index.html. The directory listing is a fallback for when this file isn't found, so you can't get a directory listing without removing the index.html file.

If you want a directory listing, you'll have to write it out yourself, which you can then format and style however you choose. The basic structure is very simple if you want to write it directly, take the internal dirList function for example:

w.Header().Set("Content-Type", "text/html; charset=utf-8")
fmt.Fprintf(w, "<pre>\n")
for _, d := range dirs {
	name := d.Name()
	if d.IsDir() {
		name += "/"
	}
	url := url.URL{Path: name}
	fmt.Fprintf(w, "<a href=\"%s\">%s</a>\n", url.String(), htmlReplacer.Replace(name))
}
fmt.Fprintf(w, "</pre>\n")

I think there are 3 ways:

1. Make a PR which allow accessing /index.html without redirect to golang's net/http/fs library. https://github.com/golang/go/issues/53870
2. Hack your code: replace /index.html with / to stop 301 redirect, e.g., https://github.com/ahuigo/go-lib/commit/1a99191d5c01cf9025136ce8ddb9668f123de05c#diff-67e8621fbb99281a50c089bae53d4874663d3d21ca5e90809ec207c070029351R44
3. Customize your own http fs handler instead of official tools.

Let's say you have an "images" directory for your images, like this:

http.Handle("/images/", http.StripPrefix("/images/", http.FileServer(http.Dir("images"))))

But you don't want to expose all the filenames in there. As people say, "Silence is golden."

In a browser, by default, going to /images or /images/ or /images/index.html shows a listing of all the files there, which is not really something you want to do accidentally.

I think the easiest solution from the command-line:

touch index.html

This creates an empty file that blocks the auto-generated images/index.html directory listing. And this doesn't block access to any of the images in there. Of course, a hacker could still try to brute-force guess what files are in there, so you need to use some common sense.