list files php from - create json file

Question

I want to create a php script that loads all my files (.pdf) from the 3 directory and create a json file.

I try this

$dir_2016 = \"./HCL/2016\";
$dir_201         


        

Answer 1

You should move your definition of $json_file to bottom as follow:

// ... get files code
$json_file = array(
    "2016" => $files_2016,
    "2015" => $files_2015,
    "2014" => $files_2014,
);
echo json_encode($json_file);

Because array is passing by value rather than passing by reference.

And, a better way to get files and sub-directories in a directory shallowly is use scandir, for example:

$files_2014 = array_slice(scandir('./HCL/files_2014'), 2)

See: http://php.net/manual/en/function.scandir.php

Answer 2

Building on my comment above, here's a cheap way to get only pdf-filenames in the given directories:

<?php
header('Content-Type: application/json; charset="utf-8"');

$dirs = [
    './HCL/2016',
    './HCL/2015',
    './HCL/2014',
];

$files = [];

foreach ($dirs as $dir) {
    if (is_dir($dir)) {
        $files[basename($dir)] = glob($dir . '/*.pdf');
    }
}

array_walk_recursive($files, function (&$entry) {
    $entry = basename($entry);
});

echo json_encode($files, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

Note that there's a multitude of other ways of how to get all files in a directory, so this is by no means the only solution.