* TotalIndex indexes totally
If there’s one thing that you have got to love about building Web applications it is that for all of the basic building blocks you might need you will usually find that not only has someone already written the component you need but they often give it away.
I needed a subdirectory browser for a Web server and after playing with quite a few nice tries each of which had specific problems, I found TotalIndex (see editorial links below) from All-Around Software.
TotalIndex is a set of open source PHP scripts that allow for a customizable look and feel, including the ability to assign custom icons for specific file types. You can also create a “readme.txt” file as a description for any indexed folder. The contents of this file will be displayed at the top of the page. You can also exclude specific file names, subdirectories and file extensions from being displayed.
Listing can be sorted by name, size, type and modification date in either ascending or descending order.
Installation simply requires copying all of the TotalIndex files into a subdirectory, opening the index.php and config.php files, and editing the absolute and HTTP server path variables for your installation. Note that you have to terminate the paths with “/” otherwise you will get errors. You also have to set the administrator name and password if you want to be able to interactively specify file types and associated icons.
Once configured you simply copy the index.php file to each subdirectory you want to be able to list and create readme.txt files as needed. You can modify all of the duplicate index.php files individually to enable, for example, different file exclusions.
This is a nice, simple script that does a fine job. If you have any similar scripts, scripts that are small, elegant, effective and cheap, that you either wrote or found online let me know so I can review them.
