filectime

coolkoon at gmail dot com (2011-01-23 14:42:57)

You should avoid feeding the function files without a path. This applies for filemtime() and possibly fileatime() as well. If you omit the path the command will fail with the warning "filectime(): stat failed for filename.php".

m dot rabe at directbox dot com (2010-01-06 18:07:37)

Under Windows you can use fileatime() instead of filectime().

soapergem at gmail dot com (2009-09-05 09:19:09)

Note that on Windows systems, filectime will show the file creation time, as there is no such thing as "change time" in Windows.

javi at live dot com (2009-02-03 02:15:13)

Filemtime seems to return the date of the EARLIEST modified file inside a folder, so this is a recursive function to return the date of the LAST (most recently) modified file inside a folder.

<?php

// Only take into account those files whose extensions you want to show.
$allowedExtensions = array(
  'zip',
  'rar',
  'pdf',
  'txt'
);

function filemtime_r($path)
{
    global $allowedExtensions;
    
    if (!file_exists($path))
        return 0;
    
    $extension = end(explode(".", $path));     
    if (is_file($path) && in_array($extension, $allowedExtensions))
        return filemtime($path);
    $ret = 0;
    
     foreach (glob($path."/*") as $fn)
     {
        if (filemtime_r($fn) > $ret)
            $ret = filemtime_r($fn);    
            // This will return a timestamp, you will have to use date().
     }
    return $ret;    
}

?>

rich at rmbwebs dot com (2008-03-11 12:07:22)

This is a modification of simraLIAS at mac dot com's code.
Modification dates should not be used for keys in an array when sorting by date because there is no guarantee that all files will have different dates.  Collisions resulting in files missing from the list could be possible.  A better way is to use the filename as the key (guaranteed to not be collisions)

<?php
foreach (glob("../downloads/*") as $path) { //configure path
    $docs[$path] = filectime($path);
} asort($docs); // sort by value, preserving keys

foreach ($docs as $path => $timestamp) {
    print date("d. M. Y: ", $timestamp);
    print '<a href="'. $path .'">'. basename($path) .'</a><br />';
}
?>

simraLIAS at mac dot com (2007-11-30 03:24:22)

This is another way to get a list of files ordered by upload time:

<?php
foreach (glob("../downloads/*") as $path) { //configure path
    $docs[filectime($path)] = $path;
} ksort($docs); // sort by key (timestamp)

foreach ($docs as $timestamp => $path) {
    print date("d. M. Y: ", $timestamp);
    print '<a href="'. $path .'">'. basename($path) .'</a><br />'; 
}
?>

chuck dot reeves at gmail dot com (2007-10-02 09:14:28)

filectime running on windows reading a file from a samba share, will still show the last modified date.

website at us dot kaspersky dot com (2007-08-31 10:51:38)

Line 37 of the code above has an error.
echo "File name: $file - Date Added: $date. <br/>"";
There is an extra " after the <br/> that needs to be deleted in order for this code to work.

StevieMc at example dot com (2006-11-15 06:28:49)

This method gets all the files in a directory, and echoes them in the order of the date they were added (by ftp or whatever).

<?PHP
function dirList ($directory, $sortOrder){

    //Get each file and add its details to two arrays
    $results = array();
    $handler = opendir($directory);
    while ($file = readdir($handler)) {  
        if ($file != '.' && $file != '..' && $file != "robots.txt" && $file != ".htaccess"){
            $currentModified = filectime($directory."/".$file);
            $file_names[] = $file;
            $file_dates[] = $currentModified;
        }    
    }
       closedir($handler);

    //Sort the date array by preferred order
    if ($sortOrder == "newestFirst"){
        arsort($file_dates);
    }else{
        asort($file_dates);
    }
    
    //Match file_names array to file_dates array
    $file_names_Array = array_keys($file_dates);
    foreach ($file_names_Array as $idx => $name) $name=$file_names[$name];
    $file_dates = array_merge($file_dates);
    
    $i = 0;

    //Loop through dates array and then echo the list
    foreach ($file_dates as $file_dates){
        $date = $file_dates;
        $j = $file_names_Array[$i];
        $file = $file_names[$j];
        $i++;
            
        echo  "File name: $file - Date Added: $date. <br/>"";        
    }

}
?>

I hope this is useful to somebody.

gyrbo[at]yahoo[dot]com (2002-09-21 16:35:24)

filectime doesn't seem to be working properly on Win32 systems (it seems to return the creation time). Try using filemtime if you have problems.

laurent dot pireyn at wanadoo dot be (2001-09-27 05:01:28)

If you use filectime with a symbolic link, you will get the change time of the file actually linked to. To get informations about the link self, use lstat.