Background
Remember those classic directory listings from the early days of the web? They’re still useful today, especially for some static sites hosted on GitHub Pages.
In this quick tutorial,I’ll show you how to automatically create static directory listings on GitHub Actions/Pages with a simple PHP script I created a while back.
Best parts: It’s totally free, has no dependencies, and works perfectly in GitHub Actions as they have a built-in PHP runtime.
Trying it locally
To get started, you can try the script locally. Here’s how:
Download the script from the GitHub repository:
Next run the script in your terminal:
This will create a self-contained index.html file with a directory listing of the current directory.
Using it in GitHub Actions
To use the script in GitHub Actions, you can base it on this sample workflow:
name: Demo Action
on:
push:
branches: [ “main” ]
permissions:
contents: read
pages: write
id-token: write
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
– uses: actions/checkout@v3
# Download the directory listing script
– name: Download Directory Listing Script
run: wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/caendesilva/php-directory-listing/master/directory-listing.php -O directory-listing.php
# Run the directory listing script
– name: Run Directory Listing Script
run: php directory-listing.php
# Optional: Deploy to GitHub Pages (you can also commit the file to your repository)
– name: Setup Pages
uses: actions/configure-pages@v5
– name: Upload artifact
uses: actions/upload-pages-artifact@v3
with:
path: ‘.’
– name: Deploy to GitHub Pages
id: deployment
uses: actions/deploy-pages@v4
This workflow will create a directory listing of the repository files and publish it to GitHub Pages.
Conclusion
That’s it! You now have a simple way to create static directory listings on GitHub Actions/Pages. Feel free to customize the script or workflow to fit your needs.
See the source code at https://github.com/caendesilva/php-directory-listing and try the live demo at https://git.desilva.se/php-directory-listing/.
