Apache Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Allowing a Client-Specified Sort Order

Problem

You want to allow the end user to specify the order in which the listing should be ordered.

Solution

Users can supply QUERY_STRING arguments to modify the sort order:

http://servername/directory/?C=D&O=D

Or you can provide a form allowing the user to select the sort order, by placing the following form in a HeaderName file:

 <form action="" method="get">
 Order by by <select name="C">
 <option value="N" selected="selected"> Name</option>
 <option value="M"> Date Modified</option>
 <option value="S"> Size</option>
 <option value="D"> Description</option>
 </select>
 <select name="O">
 <option value="A" selected="selected"> Ascending</option>
 <option value="D"> Descending</option>
 </select>
 <input type="submit" value="Go" />
 </form>

Discussion

Allowing the end user to control his experience is a powerful way to make your Web content more useful.

Unless this feature has been explicitly disabled using the IgnoreClient argument to IndexOptions, you will always be able to reorder the directory listing using the ?C= and ?O= QUERY_STRING options.

O (order) can be set to either A, for Ascending, or D, for Descending, and C (column) may be set to one of the following:

• N—name of the file or directory

• M—the last modified date of the file or directory

• S—the size of the file in bytes

• D—the description of the file, set with the AddDescription directive

The argument parsing routine will quit if it encounters an invalid argument.

With Apache 1.3, the syntax is, instead: