[Resolved] Files sorted by date, open newest in directory

homncruse

If I've got a directory full of newsletters and whatnot, with different file types (some PDF, some DOC, some TXT, etc), and they're all named in YYYYMMDD format, how would I access the directory to get the file contents and pull the "newest" (first in reverse alphabetical order, ie 20040918.pdf) file to open, without giving the user a directory listing? I want to click on a link to the PHP file and have it automatically open. I'm not necessarily asking for the entire code snippet to make it work (although that would be great too), but merely a suggestion on where to begin. I don't know how to access file directories in PHP.

crosbystillsnas

as you have named the files in that format you could just read the directory to an array and sort/rsort that array.

devinemke

create a link like this:

<a href="get_latest.php">get lastest file</a>

then in get_latest.php...

<?
$path = '/path/to/files/';
$handle = opendir($path);
while (($filename = readdir($handle)) !== false)
{
	if ($filename != '.' && $filename != '..') {$file_array[] = $filename;}
}
rsort($file_array);
$lastest_file = reset($file_array);
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' . $lastest_file . '"');
?>

note: if you have PHP5, the above code could be simplified further by using [man]scandir[/man]

drawmack

If this directory is going to get very large (more then 100 entries) I would link it to a database and store the filenames in a database. Then you could just do a select from the database and load the newest file without having to read the entire directory everytime. This is more coding but on a high traffic site it could be the difference between crashing and running flawlessly.

homncruse

Originally posted by devinemke
create a link like this:
<a href="get_latest.php">get lastest file</a>
then in get_latest.php...
<?
$path = '/path/to/files/';
$handle = opendir($path);
while (($filename = readdir($handle)) !== false)
{
	if ($filename != '.' && $filename != '..') {$file_array[] = $filename;}
}
rsort($file_array);
$lastest_file = reset($file_array);
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="' . $lastest_file . '"');
?>
note: if you have PHP5, the above code could be simplified further by using [man]scandir[/man] [/B]

Your code works great for finding the file, thank you, but there is one problem - it doesn't return the content of the file! It prompts me with a download dialog (with every extension), and clicking on 'Open' opens up the file in its associated program, but it's blank (.htm shows no data, .txt shows no data, etc, but the filename is correct)

homncruse

Originally posted by homncruse
Your code works great for finding the file, thank you, but there is one problem - it doesn't return the content of the file! It prompts me with a download dialog (with every extension), and clicking on 'Open' opens up the file in its associated program, but it's blank (.htm shows no data, .txt shows no data, etc, but the filename is correct)

I was able to solve that problem by using

header("Location: newsletters/$lastest_file");

instead of what you had. Thank you for the great help!