reading Directory file list

brainarray

Ok I am working on code to generate a random image from several files in one directory and got it working pretty much, but I am aslo working on another to simplely store all the file names in an array and then print them to the screen as links in a php page.

Any pointers or ideas you can lend me? I am new to php, but have done a few things and read a few books, but none covered this really. I read abotu the is_dir, and fopen, and fread which I used for the first project, but I Can not get the filenames correctly gathered into the array.

Thanks!

Rohan_Hill

<?php
$filearray = array();
if ($dir = @opendir("YOUR_DIRECTORY")) {
  while (($file = readdir($dir)) !== false) {
    if ($file != "." && $file != "..") {
     $filearray[] = $file;
   }
  }  

  closedir($dir);
}

?>

That will look in the directory you specify and put all the files into $filearray 🙂

brainarray

perfect thanks.

BTW, what is the @ symbol?
And I want to traverse the array what conditional can be used to know the end of the array? like with java's array.lenght(). I see how to access a direct postions [3] but how do I test for end or array, so I do not get a null pointer?

So I can use the array of file names and use them to be plced in the page not one after the other and not as links, to be used to throughout the page as images...

<?php

$filearray = array();

if ($dir = @opendir("URL")) {
while (($file = readdir($dir)) !== false) {
if ($file != "." && $file != "..") {
$filearray[] = $file;
print("<a href=\"$file\">$file</a><BR> \n");
}
}

closedir($dir);
}

Rohan_Hill

The @ symbol means that if the function it's place infront of generates an error, it won't be displayed or halt the script. To tell how long $filearray is, use count ($filearray). That will tell you how many elements there are in it, so if it tells you 5, that means that since the elements are numbered from 0, the last element will be $filearray[4] 🙂

brainarray

Originally posted by Rohan Hill
The @ symbol means that if the function it's place infront of generates an error, it won't be displayed or halt the script. To tell how long $filearray is, use count ($filearray). That will tell you how many elements there are in it, so if it tells you 5, that means that since the elements are numbered from 0, the last element will be $filearray[4] 🙂

great thanks again! 🙂

edwardsbc

Actually, you don't even need to know how many elements are in the array to walk it. Use [man]foreach()[/man] or a while/list structure:

foreach($filelist as $key=>$value) {
#do somethink with the keys and values here...
}

brainarray

Originally posted by edwardsbc
Actually, you don't even need to know how many elements are in the array to walk it. Use [man]foreach()[/man] or a while/list structure:

foreach($filelist as $key=>$value) {
#do somethink with the keys and values here...
}

I am using a while loop to traverse, but since I will not know the content the easiest way is to just stop at the length. I did read about seperateing the with a key and vaule, but in this case there is not key really, just the value stored...

My goal here is to build a products page on the fly so for each .jpg file in the folder is one more product to be displayed in that catagorey. Now I am stumped on adding the discription without using sql. Since I Was hopeing to have a universial code to do ready each directory and build the page, but since each product has a unique discription I think I am going to use a database to store the image url, the discription, and the other information, like price and quanity. that way it will all link together.

Thanks...