Get the latest file addition in a directory

Question

How to get the latest file name, or the file path that is added into a directory?

Answer 1

$path = "/path/to/my/dir"; 

$latest_ctime = 0;
$latest_filename = '';    

$d = dir($path);
while (false !== ($entry = $d->read())) {
  $filepath = "{$path}/{$entry}";
  // could do also other checks than just checking whether the entry is a file
  if (is_file($filepath) && filectime($filepath) > $latest_ctime) {
    $latest_ctime = filectime($filepath);
    $latest_filename = $entry;
  }
}

// now $latest_filename contains the filename of the file that changed last

Answer 2

Enumerate all directory files, get the filemtime() of each and you are done.

Answer 3

$dir = "/path/to/Your/dir";         
$pattern = '\.(zip|ZIP|pdf|PDF)$'; // check only file with these ext.          
$newstamp = 0;            
$newname = "";

if ($handle = opendir($dir)) {               
       while (false !== ($fname = readdir($handle)))  {            
         // Eliminate current directory, parent directory            
         if (ereg('^\.{1,2}$',$fname)) continue;            
         // Eliminate other pages not in pattern            
         if (! ereg($pattern,$fname)) continue;            
         $timedat = filemtime("$dir/$fname");            
         if ($timedat > $newstamp) {
            $newstamp = $timedat;
            $newname = $fname;
          }
         }
        }
closedir ($handle);

// $newstamp is the time for the latest file
// $newname is the name of the latest file
// print last mod.file - format date as you like            
print $newname . " - " . date( "Y/m/d", $newstamp); 

Answer 4

$dir = dirname(__FILE__).DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;
$lastMod = 0;
$lastModFile = '';
foreach (scandir($dir) as $entry) {
    if (is_file($dir.$entry) && filectime($dir.$entry) > $lastMod) {
        $lastMod = filectime($dir.$entry);
        $lastModFile = $entry;
    }
}

Answer 5

My solution with PHP 5:

$dir = "/path/to/Your/dir"; 
$arraydir =scandir($dir, 1);
echo "arraydir 0: " . $arraydir[0] . "<br/>"; // 1. new file
echo "arraydir 1: " . $arraydir[1] . "<br/>"; // 2. new file
echo "arraydir elements: " . count($arraydir) . "<br/>";

(search words DE: neuste und zweitneuste Datei eines Ordners anzeigen mit PHP )

Answer 6

Here's how you can do it using DirectoryIterator:

foreach(new DirectoryIterator('/path/to/read') as $item) {
    if ($item->isFile() && (empty($file) || $item->getMTime() > $file->getMTime())) {
        $file = clone $item;
    }
}

The resulting contents of $file is an instance of the DirectoryIterator class and as such you have access to all of it's methods. To simply get the full path of the result you can do:

echo $file->getPathname();