List directory contents by date

Loads the contens of a dir an sorts them by the date of creation.

function listdir_by_date($path){
    $dir = opendir($path);
    $list = array();
    while($file = readdir($dir)){
        if ($file != '.' and $file != '..'){
            // add the filename, to be sure not to
            // overwrite a array key
            $ctime = filectime($data_path . $file) . ',' . $file;
            $list[$ctime] = $file;
        }
    }
    closedir($dir);
    krsort($list);
    return $list;
}

Snippet information

Author:
Jonas John

License:
Public Domain

Language:
PHP

Created:
03/29/2006

Updated:
03/29/2006

Tags:
directory functions, folder, files

listdir_by_date('data/');

Sorry folks, comments have been deactivated for now due to the large amount of spam.

Please try to post your questions or problems on a related programming board, a suitable mailing list, a programming chat-room,
or use a QA website like stackoverflow because I'm usually too busy to answer any mails related
to my code snippets. Therefore please just mail me if you found a serious bug... Thank you!

Older comments:

rob_v February 05, 2010 at 18:32

I always found this alot easier:

$file = '*';
$dir = '/path/to/wherever/';

$sorted_array = listdir_by_date($dir.$file);

function listdir_by_date($pathtosearch)
{
foreach (glob($pathtosearch) as $filename)
{
$file_array[filectime($filename)]=basename($filename); // or just $filename
}
ksort($file_array);
return $file_array;
}

Rick December 14, 2009 at 21:38

Groovy! Real time saver. Thanks!

Rolf October 26, 2009 at 22:43

$data_path is apparently supposed to be "$path".

Alexander Doche February 18, 2009 at 17:50

should of cleaned that up a bit first, sorry :

Alexander Doche February 18, 2009 at 17:45

just replace $data_path with $path
works fine for me

you can print the list by making a for loop or just by print_r($list)

so i basically did this as a test to see if it works

$path = '../upload/pubvoyages/';//$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/fr/pubvoyages/';
$list = listdir_by_date($path);

print_r ($list);

function listdir_by_date($path){
$dir = opendir($path);
$list = array();
while($file = readdir($dir)){
if ($file != '.' and $file != '..'){
// add the filename, to be sure not to
// overwrite a array key
$ctime = filectime($path . $file) . ',' . $file;
$list[$ctime] = $file;
}
}
closedir($dir);
krsort($list);
return $list;
}

guest August 04, 2008 at 08:31

what is: $data_path in:

$ctime = filectime($data_path . $file) . ',' . $file;

???