Apache Folder Index Description Field

Question

In an Apache Index file listing, there is a description field (along with Name, Last Modified and Size). What should or could populate this column of data?

More information:

On an Apache web server, I can enable a setting called "Apache Module mod_autoindex"

When this setting is enabled, if I visit a folder in a browser, and that folder does not have an index.html file, Apache will display the files and folders in that folder. The interface is pretty basic, but provides useful information about the files on a server.

File/folder information is displayed in a table with 4 columns (presumably generated by Apache). These columns are: Name, Last Modified, Size and Description.

Name, Last Modified and Size are self-explanatory. The description column however, is always empty. I was curious would could or should show up here. I had a hard time finding documentation on it.

Answer 1

A colleague of mine here found what I needed.

The description column on the Apache File Listing index view is populated using data you can create here: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_autoindex.html#adddescription

Edit: I'll also add that this documentation on setting file index formatting and descriptions via the .htaccess file is really helpful too: https://perishablepress.com/better-default-directory-views-with-htaccess/

Answer 2

Take a look at my website: https://wrcraig.com/ApacheDirectoryDescriptions. It goes beyond the default directory description, providing a spreadsheet to assist in creating detailed descriptions and exporting them in FancyIndex/AddDescription format for inclusion in .htaccess.

It also provides a menu driven BASH scripted alternative, using the FancyIndex descriptive data above (automatically adding A/V durations) to recursively populate index.html while retaining the security features of .htaccess.

The site has examples of the input spreadsheet and both the FancyIndex output and the optional BASH scripted output.