Question

I am trying to list files from an FTP server. I would like to get an array of sub-directories and files in them as a tree, as shown below:

folder1
       file1.txt
       file2.txt
folder2
       folder2a
               file1.txt
               file2.txt
               file.3txt
       folder2b
              file1.txt

Now my array will be something like

[folder1]=>array(file1.txt,file2.txt) 
[folder2]=>array([folder2a]=>array(file1.txt,file2txt,file3.txt)
[folder2b]=>array(file1.txt))

Note: the array above might not be the exact syntax but just to give an idea of what I am looking for.
I tried ftp_nlist() but seems to only return the files and folders but not the files inside the sub-folders.
Here is a sample on how my code looks like

 // set up basic connection
$conn_id = ftp_connect($ftp_server);

// login with username and password
$login_result = ftp_login($conn_id, $ftp_user_name, $ftp_user_pass);

// get contents of the ftp directory
$contents = ftp_nlist($conn_id, ".");

// output $contents
var_dump($contents);

With the above it only lists of folders and not files. Anyone with a good idea on how to go around this?
Thank you.

Answer 1

ftp_nlist() doesn’t fetch files and directories recursively, it just returns all files and folders at the specified path. You could write a function to fetch the results in a recursive manner. Here is an example recursive function that someone wrote, which I found in the PHP ftp_nlist() documentation:

<?php 
/** 
 * ftpRecursiveFileListing 
 * 
 * Get a recursive listing of all files in all subfolders given an ftp handle and path 
 * 
 * @param resource $ftpConnection  the ftp connection handle 
 * @param string $path  the folder/directory path 
 * @return array $allFiles the list of files in the format: directory => $filename 
 * @author Niklas Berglund 
 * @author Vijay Mahrra 
 */ 
function ftpRecursiveFileListing($ftpConnection, $path) { 
    static $allFiles = array(); 
    $contents = ftp_nlist($ftpConnection, $path); 

    foreach($contents as $currentFile) { 
        // assuming its a folder if there's no dot in the name 
        if (strpos($currentFile, '.') === false) { 
            ftpRecursiveFileListing($ftpConnection, $currentFile); 
        } 
        $allFiles[$path][] = substr($currentFile, strlen($path) + 1); 
    } 
    return $allFiles; 
} 
?>