Get the files inside a directory

Question

How to get the file names inside a directory using PHP?

I couldn't find the relevant command using Google, so I hope that this question will help those who are asking along the similar lines.

Answer 1

There's a lot of ways. The older way is scandir but DirectoryIterator is probably the best way.

There's also readdir (to be used with opendir) and glob.

Here are some examples on how to use each one to print all the files in the current directory:

DirectoryIterator usage: (recommended)

foreach (new DirectoryIterator('.') as $file) {
    if($file->isDot()) continue;
    print $file->getFilename() . '<br>';
}

scandir usage:

$files = scandir('.');
foreach($files as $file) {
    if($file == '.' || $file == '..') continue;
    print $file . '<br>';
}

opendir and readdir usage:

if ($handle = opendir('.')) {
    while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
        if($file == '.' || $file == '..') continue;
        print $file . '<br>';
    }
    closedir($handle);
}

glob usage:

foreach (glob("*") as $file) {
    if($file == '.' || $file == '..') continue;
    print $file . '<br>';
}

As mentioned in the comments, glob is nice because the asterisk I used there can actually be used to do matches on the files, so glob('*.txt') would get you all the text files in the folder and glob('image_*') would get you all files that start with image_

Answer 2

The Paolo Bergantino's answer was fine but is now outdated!
Please consider the below official ways to get the Files inside a directory.

---

FilesystemIterator

FilesystemIterator has many new features compared to its ancestor DirectoryIterator as for instance the possibility to avoid the statement if($file->isDot()) continue;. See also the question Difference between DirectoryIterator and FilesystemIterator.

$it = new FilesystemIterator(__DIR__);
foreach ($it as $fileinfo) {
    echo $fileinfo->getFilename() , PHP_EOL;
}

---

RecursiveDirectoryIterator

This snippet lists PHP files in all sub-directories.

$dir   = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator(__DIR__);
$flat  = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($dir);
$files = new RegexIterator($flat, '/\.php$/i');
foreach($files as $file) {
    echo $file , PHP_EOL;
}

See also the Wrikken's answer.

Answer 3

Most of the time I imagine you want to skip . and ... Here is that with recursion:

<?php
$o_dir = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator('.', FilesystemIterator::SKIP_DOTS);
$o_iter = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($o_dir);
foreach ($o_iter as $o_name) {
   echo $o_name->getFilename();
}

https://php.net/class.recursivedirectoryiterator

Answer 4

The old way would be:

<?php
    $path = realpath('.'); // put in your path here
    $dir_handle = @opendir($path) or die("Unable to open $path");
    $directories = array();
    while ($file = readdir($dir_handle)) 
        $directories[] = $file;
    closedir($dir_handle);
?>

As already mentioned the directory iterator might be the better way for PHP 5.