sort files by date in PHP

Question

I currently have an index.php file which allows me to output the list of files inside the same directory, the output shows the names then I used filemtime() function to show

Answer 1

I use your exact proposed code with only some few additional lines. The idea is more or less the same of the one proposed by @elias, but in this solution there cannot be conflicts on the keys since each file in the directory has a different filename and so adding it to the key solves the conflicts. The first part of the key is the datetime string formatted in a manner such that I can lexicographically compare two of them.

if ($handle = opendir('.')) {
    $result = array();
    while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
        if ($file != "." && $file != "..") {
            $lastModified = date('F d Y, H:i:s',filemtime($file));
            if(strlen($file)-strpos($file,".swf")== 4){
                $result [date('Y-m-d H:i:s',filemtime($file)).$file] =
                    "<tr><td><input type=\"checkbox\" name=\"box[]\"></td><td><a href=\"$file\" target=\"_blank\">$file</a></td><td>$lastModified</td></tr>";
            }
        }
    }
    closedir($handle);
    krsort($result);
    echo implode('', $result);
}

Answer 2

This would get all files in path/to/files with an .swf extension into an array and then sort that array by the file's mtime

$files = glob('path/to/files/*.swf');
usort($files, function($a, $b) {
    return filemtime($a) < filemtime($b);
});

The above uses an Lambda function and requires PHP 5.3. Prior to 5.3, you would do

usort($files, create_function('$a,$b', 'return filemtime($a)<filemtime($b);'));

If you don't want to use an anonymous function, you can just as well define the callback as a regular function and pass the function name to usort instead.

With the resulting array, you would then iterate over the files like this:

foreach($files as $file){
    printf('<tr><td><input type="checkbox" name="box[]"></td>
            <td><a href="%1$s" target="_blank">%1$s</a></td>
            <td>%2$s</td></tr>', 
            $file, // or basename($file) for just the filename w\out path
            date('F d Y, H:i:s', filemtime($file)));
}

Note that because you already called filemtime when sorting the files, there is no additional cost when calling it again in the foreach loop due to the stat cache.

Answer 3

An example that uses RecursiveDirectoryIterator class, it's a convenient way to iterate recursively over filesystem.

$output = array();
foreach( new RecursiveIteratorIterator( 
    new RecursiveDirectoryIterator( 'path', FilesystemIterator::SKIP_DOTS | FilesystemIterator::UNIX_PATHS ) ) as $value ) {      
        if ( $value->isFile() ) {
            $output[] = array( $value->getMTime(), $value->getRealPath() );
        }
}

usort ( $output, function( $a, $b ) {
    return $a[0] > $b[0];
});

Answer 4

You need to put the files into an array in order to sort and find the last modified file.

$files = array();
if ($handle = opendir('.')) {
    while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
        if ($file != "." && $file != "..") {
           $files[filemtime($file)] = $file;
        }
    }
    closedir($handle);

    // sort
    ksort($files);
    // find the last modification
    $reallyLastModified = end($files);

    foreach($files as $file) {
        $lastModified = date('F d Y, H:i:s',filemtime($file));
        if(strlen($file)-strpos($file,".swf")== 4){
           if ($file == $reallyLastModified) {
             // do stuff for the real last modified file
           }
           echo "<tr><td><input type=\"checkbox\" name=\"box[]\"></td><td><a href=\"$file\" target=\"_blank\">$file</a></td><td>$lastModified</td></tr>";
        }
    }
}

Not tested, but that's how to do it.

Answer 5

$files = array_diff(scandir($dir,SCANDIR_SORT_DESCENDING), array('..', '.'));
print_r($files);