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filesystemsfastapi

List files from a static folder in FastAPI

I know how to serve static files in FastAPI using StaticFiles, how can I enable directory listing like in Apache web server?

from fastapi import FastAPI
from fastapi.staticfiles import StaticFiles

app = FastAPI(...)

app.mount("/samples", StaticFiles(directory='samples'), name="samples")

# GET http://localhost:8000/samples/path/to/file.jpg -> OK
# GET http://localhost:8000/samples -> not found error
Solution

  • I am not sure FastAPI/Starlette exposes functionality to do that out of the box.

    But it shouldn't be too hard to implement something yourself. This could be a starting point:

    import os
from fastapi import FastAPI, Request
from fastapi.responses import HTMLResponse
from fastapi.staticfiles import StaticFiles
from fastapi.templating import Jinja2Templates

app = FastAPI()

app.mount("/static", StaticFiles(directory="static"), name="static")


templates = Jinja2Templates(directory="templates")


@app.get("/static", response_class=HTMLResponse)
def list_files(request: Request):

    files = os.listdir("./static")
    files_paths = sorted([f"{request.url._url}/{f}" for f in files])
    print(files_paths)
    return templates.TemplateResponse(
        "list_files.html", {"request": request, "files": files_paths}
    )

    list_files.html

    <html>
  <head>
    <title>Files</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Files:</h1>
    <ul>
      {% for file in files %}
      <li><a href="{{file}}">{{file}}</a></li>
      {% endfor %}
    </ul>
  </body>
</html>

    When you hit /static you would see:

    enter image description here

    Additional notes

    Note that list_files.html is an html template and should sit in the directory templates/ as @Michel Hua pertinently mentioned in his comment. For more info on templates check the templates docs.