File listing... a question

[Anon]

My problem: I'm writing a page that must show every gif I have in a folder. I'd like to make a sort of pictures gallery dynamically created based on files present in a folder.
I know file_exists() function but it needs exact file names... so...

anybody can help me, plz?

thx
bye
giampy

[[deleted]]

read about opendir()

[btubalinal]

Hi,

I think you could use the exec() function to do what I believe you want to accomplish.

For example:

/
On Windows:
exec("dir C:\web\images\.gif /b/s", $file_array, $rc);

On Linux:
exec("ls -R /images/*.jpg", $file_array, $rc);

Note 1: The result of this function call will be stored in $file_array. $rc is for any return code.

Note 2: If you don't specify a beginning path like 'C:\web\images\' for windows or '/images' for linux, it will be assumed that you want a directory listing for the current directory, which would be wherever this script is located in.

Note 3: the '/b' switch for windows means, "return the files to me in bare format". the '/s' switch means to include subdirectories in the search. on linux, the 'ls' command already returns it in bare format and the -R is used to traverse the subdirectories.

I tested this on my Windows box not on Linux, but I know that the Linux command shown above is what is functionally equivalent to the Windows command.

I hope this helps in some way.

Bart

[Anon]

Many thanx,
now I solved my problem.

Cheers
giampy

[[deleted]]

Why call an external program when PHP can do it itself?

[btubalinal]

Hi Vincent,

I agree. But when I tried to use opendir() as you suggested, I don't really see how that helps him find gif files. I tried to code it as per the PHP manual and the only thing I can see that it is useful for is for traversing a directory. But it won't show up all the gif files that you're looking for. How would you write the code using opendir()? Just wondering because I like to learn new things.

Bart

[[deleted]]

Findinf gif files is a matter of trversing the directory and checking each entry to see if it is a gif file.

Have a look at the annotation in the manual for readdir()

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.readdir.php

there is afunction there that does what you want, but for jpg files:

// You can push all files in a
// directory into a array with opendir
// and array_push functions.
// This example for pushing all .jpg
// files in $dizin directory into
// $imagelist array.

function imagelist($dizin)
{

$imagelist=array();
$handle=opendir("$dizin");
while ($filename = readdir($handle))
{
if ($file != "." && $file != "..") {
$ext=substr($filename,-4);
if ($ext == ".jpg") {
$file=substr($filename,0,-4);
array_push($imagelist, "$file");
}
}
}

}

[btubalinal]

Hello,

Thank you. That was very helpful. I understand what you mean know.

Bart