file_server

A static file server. It works by appending the request's URI path to the site's root path.

By default, it enforces canonical URIs; meaning HTTP redirects will be issued for requests to directories that do not end with a trailing slash (to add it) or requests to files that have a trailing slash (to remove it). Redirects are not issued, however, if an internal rewrite modifies the last element of the path (the filename).

Most often, the file_server directive is paired with the root directive to set file root for the whole site.

Syntax

file_server [<matcher>] [browse] {
	root          <path>
	hide          <files...>
	index         <filenames...>
	browse        [<template_file>]
	precompressed <formats...>
	status        <status>
	disable_canonical_uris
}

• browse enables file listings for requests to directories that do not have an index file.
• root sets the path to the site root for just this file server instance, overriding any other. Default: {http.vars.root} or the current working directory. Note: This subdirective only changes the root for this directive. For other directives (like try_files or templates) to know the same site root, use the root directive, not this subdirective.
• hide is a list of files or folders to hide; if requested, the file server will pretend they do not exist. Accepts placeholders and glob patterns. Note that these are file system paths, NOT request paths. In other words, relative paths use the current working directory as a base, NOT the site root; and all paths are transformed to their absolute form before comparisons (if possible). Specifying a file name or pattern without a path separator will hide all files with a matching name regardless of its location; otherwise, a path prefix match will be attempted, and then a globular match. Since this is a Caddyfile config, the active configuration file(s) will be added by default.
• index is a list of filenames to look for as index files. Default: index.html index.txt
• <template_file> is an optional custom template file to use for directory listings. Defaults to the template that can be found here in the source code . Browse templates can use actions from the standard templates module as well.
• precompressed is the list of encoding formats to search for precompressed sidecar files. Arguments are an ordered list of encoding formats to search for precompressed sidecar files. Supported formats are gzip, zstd and br.
• status is an optional status code override to be used when writing the response. Particularly useful when responding to a request with a custom error page. Can be a 3-digit status code, For example: 404. Placeholders are supported. By default, the written status code will typically be 200, or 206 for partial content.
• disable_canonical_uris disables the default behaviour of redirecting to add a trailing slash if the request path is a directory, or remove the trailing slash if the request path is a file. Note that by default, canonicalization will not happen if the last element of the request's path (the filename) underwent an internal rewrite, to avoid clobbering an explicit rewrite with implicit behaviour.

Examples

A static file server out of the current directory:

file_server

With file listings enabled:

file_server browse

Only serve static files out of the /static folder:

file_server /static/*

The file_server directive is usually paired with the root directive to set the root path from which to serve files:

root * /home/user/public_html
file_server

Hide all .git folders and their contents:

file_server {
	hide .git
}

If supported by the client (Accept-Encoding header) checks the existence of precompressed files along side the requested file. So if /path/to/file is requested, it checks for /path/to/file.zst, /path/to/file.br and /path/to/file.gz in that order and serves the first available file with corresponding Content-Encoding:

file_server {
	precompressed zstd br gzip
}