How to avoid long file names being truncated when the server lists the folder content?

Question

Having a remote folder, I want to list all files in it using a web browser. Unfortunately, when file names are long, they are truncated. I observe this whichever the browser (Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer). Is there a simple solution without having to write code?

In Safari, I observed that the browser lists the files in an HTML table. Basically, the structure is:

<table>
<tr><th>...</th><th>...</th><th>...</th></tr>
<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="..." >a-very-long-file-name.jpeg</a></td><td>file date and time</td></tr>
<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td><a href="..." >another-very-long-file-name.jpeg</td><td>file date and time</td></tr>
(...)
</table>

Using the browser developer tool, I tried adding this attribute to both the <td> and <a> elements: style="display:block;width:800px". Without success. Same when trying adding a inline stylesheet in the header.

Answer 1

I assume you are referring to the auto-generated directory index that Apache (mod_autoindex) generates. In this case, the filename is physically truncated (at 20 bytes by default) in the generated HTML source that comes from the server, so attempting to change the CSS will have no effect (and it will indeed be the same across all browsers).

However, you can change the width that the filename is truncated to with the NameWidth option of the IndexOptions directive in .htaccess. For example:

IndexOptions NameWidth=*

You can specify a fixed width in bytes or * for it to grow to whatever is necessary.

Reference:
https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_autoindex.html#indexoptions

Answer 2

I ended up with this very simple PHP script that I put as "index.php" file in the folder from which to list the files. It meets my needs.

<?php
$path = '.';
echo '<pre>';
$files = array_diff(scandir($path),array('.','..'));
print_r($files);
echo '</pre>';
?>

The array_diff() wrapper function is optional; it removes '.' and '..' from the listed files.

The <pre> ...</pre> sandwich allows to display one file per line.