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LinuxDir2HTML

LinuxDir2HTML is a small program to help create an offline manifest of your files in an easily navigable html format. It is a CLI-only clone of Snap2HTML. LinuxDir2HTML is a rewrite of DiogenesList, making significant improvements to it:

  • Python 3.6+
  • Doesn't fail on symlinks (symlinks are optional)
  • More graceful invocation and sane usage
  • Much, much, much faster
  • Highly improved code

LinuxDir2HTML will produce essentially an identical output to Snap2HTML by using the same HTML template from that project.

Known Issue

Currently any files with an astrisk character (*) will interfere with the results and cause subtle errors in the output. Files with that character in the name are uncommon since they're invalid in Windows, but it's still an issue in Linux. The fix will involve rewriting the data format from a custom one to something more standard like JSON. See the following issue for more.

Installation

Python PIP Install

Linux

python -m pip install --user --upgrade linuxdir2html

macOS

python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade linuxdir2html

Add the --upgrade flag to install or upgrade.

Basic Install

There are no external dependencies. If you do not wish to use pip, download linuxdir2html.py and template.html directly from this repo and run the python script directly.

Usage

The program takes two mandatory arguments, the directory to be indexed and the output file name without the extension. So:

linuxdir2html ~/Pictures output

will index the contents of /home/username/Pictures and save the index as output.html in the present working directory.

Extra options

There are five optional flags:

--hidden to include hidden files and directories.
--links to make the HTML link to the files directly.
--symlink to follow symlinks. This flag is dangerous (can cause circular references).
--silent to suppress output. Good for scripting. Still prints errors.
--verbose extra terminal output. Does not affect the results.

You should only enable the symlink flag if you have a known need for it.

By user request, newly introduced in v1.4.0 are a stacking --startswith and --child parameters. For example,

linuxdir2html --startswith 'dev' --child 'Pictures' ~ ~/output

will select directories that start with 'dev' and the directory named 'Pictures' from the the user's home directory. The --startswith filter only affects the root search directory, all subdirectories and files will be indexed. The hidden flag is usable with the startswith flag.

License

The LinuxDir2HTML.py file is licensed under GPLv2.

The template.html file Copyright (C) by Dan and is licensed as GPLv3.

Notes

  • There are no plans to implement a GUI.
  • The up-to-date template uses epoch time and converts to your locale. If you'd like to change this behavior, update the JS function timestampToDate in the template.
  • Certain characters like \n I've chosen to not implement handling for. In my humble opinion, just don't use new lines in file names :) Update 2023: This may be resolved when I do the JSON rewrite
  • LinuxDir2HTML requires Python 3.6 or greater, but if you modify the code to remove string interpolation and the barely used pathlib, the minimum required version will be much lower.

Similar programs

I have long used an excellent program called ncdu to perform a similar function to WinDirStat or Disk Inventory X. I recently learned it has an export feature which you may find useful. Consider using it!

Export a directory and browse it once scanning is done:

ncdu -o- ~/book | tee ~/ncduscan.file | ncdu -f-

Browse the contents of the file, without rescanning:

ncdu -f ~/ncduscan.file