Directory Browser Middleware With ASP.NET Core

1998 called, and it wants to let you know that directory browsing is still cool. ASP.NET Core may be the latest technology on the block, but it likes the “classics” just as much as you do. Skimming through the ASP.NET documentation under “Working with Static Files”, I noticed that ASP.NET Core comes with a DirectoryBrowserMiddleware component that lets you expose the contents of a FileProvider. Here is the example from the ASP.NET site.

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)
{
    app.UseStaticFiles(); // For the wwwroot folder

    app.UseStaticFiles(new StaticFileOptions()
    {
        FileProvider = new PhysicalFileProvider(
            Path.Combine(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), @"wwwroot//images")),
        RequestPath = new PathString("/MyImages")
    });

    app.UseDirectoryBrowser(new DirectoryBrowserOptions()
    {
        FileProvider = new PhysicalFileProvider(
            Path.Combine(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), @"wwwroot//images")),
        RequestPath = new PathString("/MyImages")
    });
}

And here it is running on my local machine.

There are a few things worth noting with the DirectoryBrowserMiddleware:

1. Both the StaticFileMiddleware and the DirectoryBrowserMiddleware take a FileProvider, which means the files don’t necessarily have to come from your local disk. They could as easily come from Azure Blob Storage or any other FileProvider.
2. You specify the path that directory browsing happens. In this example, it is /myimages.
3. You must specify that you can serve static files from the file system at the path of /myimages, as well as serving from wwwroot/images.

That’s really it, super simple and all with a little bit of nostalgia.