dynamic formation of array with incremental depth in PHP

Question

I want to use a function to recursively scan a folder, and assign the contents of each scan to an array.

It's simple enough to recurse through each successive index in the array using either next() or foreach - but how to dynamically add a layer of depth to the array (without hard coding it into the function) is giving me problems. Here's some pseudo:

function myScanner($start){

    static $files = array();

    $files = scandir($start);
    //do some filtering here to omit unwanted types

    $next = next($files);


    //recurse scan

    //PROBLEM: how to increment position in array to store results
    //$next_position = $files[][][].... ad infinitum

    //myScanner($start.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR.$next);
}

any ideas?

silent · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-27 15:48:00Z

2

Try something like this:

// $array is a pointer to your array
// $start is a directory to start the scan
function myScanner($start, &$array){
  // opening $start directory handle
  $handle = opendir($start);

  // now we try to read the directory contents
  while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
    // filtering . and .. "folders"
    if ($file != "." && $file != "..") {
      // a variable to test if this file is a directory
      $dirtest = $start . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $file;

      // check it
      if (is_dir($dirtest)) {
        // if it is the directory then run the function again
        // DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR here to not mix files and directories with the same name
        myScanner($dirtest, $array[$file .  DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR]);
      } else {
        // else we just add this file to an array
        $array[$file] = '';
      }
    }
  }

  // closing directory handle
  closedir($handle);
}

// test it
$mytree = array();
myScanner('/var/www', $mytree);

print "<pre>";
print_r($mytree);
print "</pre>";

edited Nov 27, 2009 at 15:48

answered Nov 27, 2009 at 15:31

silent

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3 Comments

silent Over a year ago

try again, I fixed a little :)

sunwukung Over a year ago

that worked perfectly. I didn't think about using references. This line: myScanner($dirtest, $array[$file . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR]); is the one that stumped me - I didn't see where the associative keys were getting added - until I understood that references initiate variables. I've learnt something valuable today - thankyou!

sunwukung Over a year ago

blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=417 and then there's always SPL... handy in a pinch

Sergey Kuznetsov · Accepted Answer · 2009-11-27 15:21:35Z

0

Try to use this function (and edit it for your demands):

function getDirTree($dir,$p=true) {
    $d = dir($dir);$x=array();
    while (false !== ($r = $d->read())) {
        if($r!="."&&$r!=".."&&(($p==false&&is_dir($dir.$r))||$p==true)) {
            $x[$r] = (is_dir($dir.$r)?array():(is_file($dir.$r)?true:false));
        }
    }

    foreach ($x as $key => $value) {
        if (is_dir($dir.$key."/")) {
            $x[$key] = getDirTree($dir.$key."/",$p);
        }
    }

    ksort($x);
    return $x;
}

It returns sorted array of directories.

answered Nov 27, 2009 at 15:21

Sergey Kuznetsov

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1 Comment

sunwukung Over a year ago

many thanks.... ...but without wanting to cause offense - that's a fairly dense function, and I'd like something a little gentler - perhaps with some comments?

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