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Configure > File Directives

This document describes the configuration directives of the file handler - a handler that for serving static files.

Two directives: file.dir and file.file are used to define the mapping. Other directives modify the behavior of the mappings defined by the two.

Description:

The directive maps extensions to a custom handler (e.g. FastCGI).

The directive accepts a mapping containing configuration directives that can be used at the extension level, together with a property named extension specifying a extension (starting with .) or a sequence of extensions to which the directives should be applied. If all the files (including those without extensions) shall be mapped, this property must be set to default. Only one handler must exist within the directives.

Example. Mapping PHP files to FastCGI
file.custom-handler:
  extension: .php
  fastcgi.connect:
    port: /tmp/fcgi.sock
    type: unix
Level:
global, host, path
Description:

The directive specifies the directory under which should be served for the corresponding path.

Example. Serving files under different paths
paths:
    "/":
        file.dir: /path/to/doc-root
    "/icons":
        file.dir: /path/to/icons-dir
Level:
path
See also:
file.dirlisting, file.file, file.index
Description:

A boolean flag (OFF, or ON) specifying whether or not to send the directory listing in case none of the index files exist.

Level:
global, host, path
Default:
file.dirlisting: OFF
See also:
file.dir
Description:

A boolean flag (OFF, or ON) specifying whether or not to send etags.

Level:
global, host, path
Default:
file.etag: ON
since v2.0

"file.file"

Description:

The directive maps a path to a specific file.

Example. Mapping a path to a specific file
paths:
  /robots.txt:
    file.file: /path/to/robots.txt
Level:
path
See also:
file.dir
Description:

Specifies the names of the files that should be served when the client sends a request against the directory.

The sequence of filenames are searched from left to right, and the first file that existed is sent to the client.

Level:
global, host, path
Default:
file.index: [ 'index.html', 'index.htm', 'index.txt' ]
See also:
file.dir
experimental

"file.io_uring"

Description:

If io_uring should be used for serving files.

By default, H2O uses system calls such as pread (2) or sendfile (2), which block if the file being read is not in the page cache. This can prevent H2O's worker threads from making progress on any connection handled by the affected thread. When this flag is enabled, H2O is no longer blocked by the I/O calls, as the data is asynchronously copied from disk to the page cache before h2o attempts to access it.

Level:
global, host, path
Default:
file.io_uring: OFF
See also:
io_uring-batch-size, max-spare-pipes
Description:

The directive modifies the MIME mappings by adding the specified MIME type mappings.

Example. Adding MIME mappings
file.mime.addtypes:
    "application/javascript": ".js"
    "image/jpeg": [ ".jpg", ".jpeg" ]

The default mappings is hard-coded in lib/handler/mimemap/defaults.c.h.

It is also possible to set certain attributes for a MIME type. The example below maps .css files to text/css type, setting is_compressible flag to ON and priority to highest.

Example. Setting MIME attributes
file.mime.settypes:
    "text/css":
         extensions: [".css"]
         is_compressible: yes
         priority: highest

Following attributes are recognized.

AttributePossible ValuesDescription
is_compressibleON, OFFif content is compressible
priorityhighest, normalsend priority of the content

The priority attribute affects how the HTTP/2 protocol implementation handles the request. For detail, please refer to the HTTP/2 directives listed in the see also section below. By default, mime-types for CSS and JavaScript files are the only ones that are given highest priority.

Level:
global, host, path
See also:
compress, http2-casper, http2-reprioritize-blocking-assets
Description:

Removes the MIME mappings for specified extensions supplied as a sequence of extensions.

Example. Removing MIME mappings
file.mime.removetypes: [ ".jpg", ".jpeg" ]
Level:
global, host, path
Description:

Sets the default MIME-type that is used when an extension does not exist in the MIME mappings

Level:
global, host, path
Default:
file.mime.setdefaulttype: "application/octet-stream"
Description:

Resets the MIME mappings to given mapping.

Example. Resetting the MIME mappings to minimum
file.mime.settypes:
    "text/html":  [ ".html", ".htm" ]
    "text/plain": ".txt"
Level:
global, host, path
Description:

A flag indicating how a pre-compressed file should be served.

If set to ON, the handler looks for a file with .br, .zst, or .gz appended and sends the file, if the client is capable of transparently decoding a brotli, zstd, or gzip-encoded response. For example, if a client requests a file named index.html with Accept-Encoding: gzip header and if index.html.gz exists, the .gz file is sent as a response together with a Content-Encoding: gzip response header. When both the client and the server support multiple content encodings, the encoding chosen is the first one listed in the following order: brotli, zstd, gzip.

If set to OFF, the handler always serves the file specified by the client.

Starting from version 2.2, gunzip is also supported. If set, the handler acts identical to when the value was set to ON. In addition, the handler will send an uncompressed response by dynamically decompressing the .gz file if the client and the server failed to agree on using a pre-compressed file as the response and if a non-compressed file was not found. The option is useful when conserving disk space is important; it is possible to remove the uncompressed files in place for gzipped ones.

Level:
global, host, path
Default:
file.send-compressed: OFF
See also:
compress
Description:

Obsoleted in 2.0. Synonym of file.send-compressed.

Level:
global, host, path