Stupid under-documentation, new feature in php help, opendir()

PyroX

As of PHP 4.3.0 path can also be any URL which supports directory listing, however only the file:// url wrapper supports this in PHP 4.3. As of PHP 5.0.0, support for the [url]ftp://[/url] url wrapper is included as well.

Now this does not work like I imagined, at least not in test cases:

$dh = opendir("http://www.myhost.com/mypath/");

Where mypath is indeed a directory browsable from the web.

So, is this one of them useless 'featues' that only works on the third tuesday of the month when the moon is 1/2 and green and your server is tilted 25% to the right?

In other words, I can't get it functioning, anyone done this?

feldon23

Wrappers do introduce a random element to PHP programming.

Access privileges, IP address blocking and filtering, various other configuration options and just plain dumb luck can lock you out from accessing another website in this manner.

Can you tell us what task you are trying to accomplish so we can recommend the best possible code?

Weedpacket

I doubt that would work. When you browse a directory via http, you're still going to get back a page generated by the web server - http headers and all - not at all the same thing as a filesystem's directory handle. You might be able to parse that page for filenames (grab all the links, for example)

Note that in the excerpt from the manual you posted that this is only described as working for file:// URLs since 4.3, and [url]ftp://[/url] URLs since 5.0.0. [url]http://[/url] is conspicuous by its absence.

superwormy

As weekpacket said, you need to re-read the PHP manual. It doesnt' work over HTTP, and doesn't claim to either, so don't try it :-)

PyroX

I get it, I just was reading it in a scewed mindset hoping it did what I wanted.

Guess I will go back to writing a class.