make nginx dirlistings look like lighttpd's through the magic of xslt-transforming xml dirlistings. I don't even.

dirlist.xslt

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- 
  dirlist.xslt - transform nginx's into lighttpd look-alike dirlistings

  I'm currently switching over completely from lighttpd to nginx. If you come
  up with a prettier stylesheet or other improvements, please tell me :)

-->
<!--
   Copyright (c) 2016 by Moritz Wilhelmy <mw@barfooze.de>
   All rights reserved
  
   Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
   modification, are permitted providing that the following conditions 
   are met:
   1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
   2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
      notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
      documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  
   THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR
   IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
   WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
   ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY
   DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
   DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
   OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
   HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT,
   STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING
   IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
   POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
-->
<!DOCTYPE fnord [<!ENTITY nbsp "&#160;">]>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:func="http://exslt.org/functions" xmlns:str="http://exslt.org/strings" version="1.0" exclude-result-prefixes="xhtml" extension-element-prefixes="func str">
  <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd" indent="no" media-type="application/xhtml+xml"/>
  <xsl:strip-space elements="*" />
  
  <xsl:template name="size">
    <!-- transform a size in bytes into a human readable representation -->
    <xsl:param name="bytes"/>
    <xsl:choose>
      <xsl:when test="$bytes &lt; 1000"><xsl:value-of select="$bytes" />B</xsl:when>
      <xsl:when test="$bytes &lt; 1048576"><xsl:value-of select="format-number($bytes div 1024, '0.0')" />K</xsl:when>
      <xsl:when test="$bytes &lt; 1073741824"><xsl:value-of select="format-number($bytes div 1048576, '0.0')" />M</xsl:when>
      <xsl:otherwise><xsl:value-of select="format-number(($bytes div 1073741824), '0.00')" />G</xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>
  
  <xsl:template name="timestamp">
    <!-- transform an ISO 8601 timestamp into a human readable representation -->
    <xsl:param name="iso-timestamp" />
    <xsl:value-of select="concat(substring($iso-timestamp, 0, 11), ' ', substring($iso-timestamp, 12, 5))" />
  </xsl:template>


  <xsl:template match="directory">
    <tr>
      <td class="n"><a href="{str:encode-uri(current(),true())}/"><xsl:value-of select="."/></a>/</td>
      <td class="m"><xsl:call-template name="timestamp"><xsl:with-param name="iso-timestamp" select="@mtime" /></xsl:call-template></td>
      <td class="s">- &nbsp;</td>
      <td class="t">Directory</td>
    </tr>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="file">
    <tr>
      <td class="n"><a href="{str:encode-uri(current(),true())}"><xsl:value-of select="." /></a></td>
      <td class="m"><xsl:call-template name="timestamp"><xsl:with-param name="iso-timestamp" select="@mtime" /></xsl:call-template></td>
      <td class="s"><xsl:call-template name="size"><xsl:with-param name="bytes" select="@size" /></xsl:call-template></td>
      <td class="t">File</td>
    </tr>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <html>
      <head>
<style type="text/css">a, a:active {text-decoration: none; color: blue;}
a:visited {color: #48468F;}
a:hover, a:focus {text-decoration: underline; color: red;}
body {background-color: #F5F5F5;}
h2 {margin-bottom: 12px;}
table {margin-left: 12px;}
th, td { font: 90% monospace; text-align: left;}
th { font-weight: bold; padding-right: 14px; padding-bottom: 3px;}
td {padding-right: 14px;}
td.s, th.s {text-align: right;}
div.list { background-color: white; border-top: 1px solid #646464; border-bottom: 1px solid #646464; padding-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 14px;}
div.foot { font: 90% monospace; color: #787878; padding-top: 4px;}</style>
        <title>Index of <xsl:value-of select="$path"/></title>
      </head>
      <body>
        <h2>Index of <xsl:value-of select="$path"/></h2>
        <div class="list">
          <table summary="Directory Listing" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
            <thead>
              <tr><th class="n">Name</th><th class="m">Last Modified</th><th class="s">Size</th><th class="t">Type</th></tr>
            </thead>
            <!-- uncomment the following block to enable totals -->
            <!--
            <tfoot>
              <tr>
                <td>&nbsp;</td>
              </tr>
              <tr>
                <td colspan="4">
                  <xsl:value-of select="count(//directory)"/> directories,
                  <xsl:value-of select="count(//file)"/> files,
                  <xsl:call-template name="size"><xsl:with-param name="bytes" select="sum(//file/@size)" /></xsl:call-template> total
                </td>
              </tr>
            </tfoot>
            -->
            <tbody>
              <tr><td class="n"><a href="../">Parent Directory</a>/</td><td class="m">&nbsp;</td><td class="s">- &nbsp;</td><td class="t">Directory</td></tr>
              <xsl:apply-templates />
            </tbody>
          </table>
        </div>
        <div class="foot">nginx</div>
      </body>
    </html>
  </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

nginx-snippet.conf

server {
  ...
  
  root /opt/www;

  location / {
    try_files $uri @autoindex;
  }

  location @autoindex {
    autoindex on;
    autoindex_format xml;
    xslt_string_param path $uri;
    xslt_stylesheet xslt/dirlist.xslt;
  }
}

By the way, I intentionally kept the lighttpd directory index page layout, which means you can re-use any CSS you might have written for lighttpd. Just copy-paste it into the CSS section of the XSLT file.

And in case you want to summarize how many files, directories and bytes you have, you can use something like this somewhere in the page template:

<xsl:value-of select="count(//directory)"/> directories,
<xsl:value-of select="count(//file)"/> files,
<xsl:value-of select="sum(//file/@size)"/> Bytes total

Edit: I've just inserted that too, just uncomment the corresponding block if you want to enable it. It's disabled by default because it doesn't really add much value and lighttpd doesn't have it.

Using single quotes in the nginx config--i.e. path="$uri"--allows this to work on paths that contain apostrophes.

Changing the quote style still doesn't fix the problem for URIs with qoutes in them. In fact colons will also break it, since the inline parameter parser will think there are multiple parameters. This is a known bug in the parser for inline parameters. Using xslt_string_param instead of an inline parameter is the only way to correctly handle dynamic variables.

xslt_string_param path $uri;
xslt_stylesheet xslt/dirlist.xslt;

Thanks, fixed?

The stylesheet does not escape file names properly, which leads to broken links if file names contain e.g. a colon. This change fixes it for me:

--- a/dirlist.xslt        2019-01-07 16:17:27.422834078 +0000
+++ b/dirlist.xslt        2019-01-07 16:19:00.149016433 +0000
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@
    POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
 -->
 <!DOCTYPE fnord [<!ENTITY nbsp "&#160;">]>
-<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:func="http://exslt.org/functions" version="1.0" exclude-result-prefixes="xhtml" extension-element-prefixes="func">
+<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:func="http://exslt.org/functions" xmlns:str="http://exslt.org/strings" version="1.0" exclude-result-prefixes="xhtml" extension-element-prefixes="func str">
   <xsl:output method="xml" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd" indent="no" media-type="application/xhtml+xml"/>
   <xsl:strip-space elements="*" />

@@ -56,7 +56,7 @@

   <xsl:template match="directory">
     <tr>
-      <td class="n"><a href="{current()}/"><xsl:value-of select="."/></a>/</td>
+      <td class="n"><a href="{str:encode-uri(current(),true())}/"><xsl:value-of select="."/></a>/</td>
       <td class="m"><xsl:call-template name="timestamp"><xsl:with-param name="iso-timestamp" select="@mtime" /></xsl:call-template></td>
       <td class="s">- &nbsp;</td>
       <td class="t">Directory</td>
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@

   <xsl:template match="file">
     <tr>
-      <td class="n"><a href="{current()}"><xsl:value-of select="." /></a></td>
+      <td class="n"><a href="{str:encode-uri(current(),true())}"><xsl:value-of select="." /></a></td>
       <td class="m"><xsl:call-template name="timestamp"><xsl:with-param name="iso-timestamp" select="@mtime" /></xsl:call-template></td>
       <td class="s"><xsl:call-template name="size"><xsl:with-param name="bytes" select="@size" /></xsl:call-template></td>
       <td class="t">File</td>

Thanks, merged.

How do display the localtime?

No idea, sorry. Sounds complicated if the time isn't already part of the input, since XSLT is supposedly purely functional.

Thanks for writing this template, @wilhelmy!
I enhanced the style and functionalities a bit. It looks something like this:

in case anyone's interested, here's the repo

@abdus Awesome, thanks :)
I'm relatively CSS-illiterate so I was secretly hoping for someone to help me out for years.

@wilhelmy, you are welcome!
Your XSL template saved my time. It's a win-win for both of us, I guess :D