Website directories?

[Roses Ablaze]

...if it's possible to view a webpage's directory instead of the actual webpage itself? Like, see everything that's under a certain domain name (that isn't somehow hidden or protected) even if you aren't the webmaster?

 

[Porygon]

My noob expereince says no, there are certain times where they leave directories open on the index page by not creating an index page on the main page- or a folder in the website, but I think the directory stuff is pretty easy to hide if you want it to be hidden.

 

[Trip]

Not directly as far as I'm aware, but the command-line utility (in Linux, with a Windows port available) wget has a recursive function (-r) that will download the total contents of a given directory.

- Trip

 

[Water Pokémon Master]

It is impossible to do on the internet, unless it is your own directory.

 

[Surgo]

The answers given so far are either misleading or flat-out wrong.

The correct answer is that it depends on the configuration of the HTTP server. Some, given the absence of an index file, will allow you to view the contents of the directory. Others are configured to give an access denied error.

Not directly as far as I'm aware, but the command-line utility (in Linux, with a Windows port available) wget has a recursive function (-r) that will download the total contents of a given directory.

This is a bit misleading. You need an index of the directory's contents to be able to do that.

It is impossible to do on the internet, unless it is your own directory.

Flat-out wrong.

 

[Porygon]

The answers given so far are either misleading or flat-out wrong.

The correct answer is that it depends on the configuration of the HTTP server. Some, given the absence of an index file, will allow you to view the contents of the directory. Others are configured to give an access denied error.

I think this is what I was essentially ...trying to say. The index file being unused leads to the possibility of seeing the directory. A covered index file undoes this.

I actually got around to seeing what I believe was most of a site's contents by using archive.org, and then having it show me everything archived since it couldn't find the fake directory on the site I asked for. Of course archive.org can be blocked by websites too, but that happens a lot less often than a directory being blocked. (I don't know if this all actually works, but I got it to work once so it must at least some of the time, or partially)

 

[Eevee]

No, there is technically no directory view over HTTP. What you see sometimes is a page the server is generating because there is nothing else to show and the site owner has said it's fine to show a directory index.

There is no way to force a server to create/display this file for you. This is a Good Thing.

Also, wget doesn't magically grab all files on the server; it just follows any references to other files that it sees. If a file is never referenced anywhere, wget cannot find it.