PHP Formatted Date Links from files in a folder

Question

I am very inexperienced with PHP. I have a folder on a website which will receive files named with a numeric date structure. I need href links to be created for the files which are dropped into this folder. I need the link text to be formatted by with a textual month and numeric day. For example:

File name "01-02-22 BULLETIN.pdf" becomes

<href="bulletins/2022/$file">January 2</a>.

I have been messing with the code below from this post PHP to create Links for files in a folder, but I can't seem to figure it out. The links are appearing but any date formatting I attempt returns "error Call to a member function format()."

Thanks for your help!

<?php
                    $dir = "bulletins/2022/";

                    // Open a directory, and read its contents
                    if (is_dir($dir)){
                      if ($dh = opendir($dir)){
                        while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false){
                          echo "<a href=bulletins/2022/$file>$file</a><br>";   
                    }
                    closedir($dh);
                    }
                    }
                    ?>

John Dohh · Answer 1 · 2022-07-29T22:25:09.237

The html mark up is missing quotes

Here an example:

$some_path = "bulletins/2022";

$readdir=opendir($some_path);
while ($file = readdir($readdir))
{
if($file != '..' && $file !='.' && $file !='' && $file != ".htaccess")
{

echo "<a href=\"".$some_path."/".$file."\">$file</a><br>";  // yours is missing the quotes which should always be escaped in php with a backslash

}
}
closedir($readdir);

You could also concider using php time(); as the filename which will give you a unix timestamp which can then be sorted and converted into a date and time.

This example will sort the files in a natural order

$some_path = "demo_track_previews";

$readdir=opendir($some_path);
while ($file = readdir($readdir))
{
if($file != '..' && $file !='.' && $file !='' && $file != ".htaccess")
{
if(!empty(file))
{
$all_files[] = $file; //put all files in array ready to sort
}
}
}
closedir($readdir);

if(!empty($all_files))
{
sort($all_files,SORT_NATURAL);  //You can also try rsort($all_files,SORT_NATURAL);

foreach ($all_files as $key => $each_file)
{
echo "<a href=\"".$some_path."/".$each_file."\">".$each_file."</a><br>";
}

}

EDIT: after comment if you need just the date from the filename "01-02-22 BULLETIN.pdf" then try this

foreach ($all_files as $key => $each_file)
{
  $file_name_parts = explode(" ", $each_file); // seperate the filename where there is a space - $file_name_parts[0] will be 01-02-22

echo "<a href=\"".$some_path."/".$each_file."\">".$file_name_parts[0]."</a><br>";
}

Thanks. I edited the syntax on the href. That was a typo here on stackoverflow. My problem is I need to change the href text based upon the date represented in the file name. So far i can only get the href so show the file name itself. — Ninjalope, Jul 29 '22 at 22:14
Thanks again. That last portion is successfully removing the words and the file extension. Now I'm trying to figure out how to sort the links by date, and also change the link text to written month and numbered day. For example "January 2." — Ninjalope, Aug 10 '22 at 04:24

PHP Formatted Date Links from files in a folder

1 Answers1