How to get a simple File Listing in PHP

Returning a list of files contained in a folder in PHP is turned into something fairly trivial, thanks to the built in readdir function. Basically, the function returns the name of the next entry from the currently open directory handle resource, itself opened with the standard opendir command.

(Note, if the directory handle is not specified, the last link opened by opendir() is assumed.)

The readdir function returns the file name entries in the order in which they are stored by the filesystem, meaning that it is up to you if you want to present them ordered in a particular fashion.

So in practice, a simple file listing in PHP would look as follows:

if ($handle = opendir($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/portal/widget_scripts')) {
    echo "Directory handle: $handle\n";
    echo "Entries:\n";
    while (false !== ($entry = readdir($handle))) {
        if ($entry != "." && $entry != "..") {
            echo "<p>$entry</p>\n";
        }
    }
    closedir($handle);
}

Nifty.