Question

I am using the following script to read a directory. If there is no file in the directory it should say empty. The problem is, it just keeps saying the directory is empty even though there ARE files inside and vice versa.

<?php
$pid = $_GET["prodref"];
$dir = '/assets/'.$pid.'/v';
$q   = (count(glob("$dir/*")) === 0) ? 'Empty' : 'Not empty';
    
if ($q=="Empty") 
    echo "the folder is empty"; 
else
    echo "the folder is NOT empty";
?>

Answer 1

It seems that you need scandir instead of glob, as glob can’t see unix hidden files.

<?php
$pid = basename($_GET["prodref"]); //let's sanitize it a bit
$dir = "/assets/$pid/v";

if (is_dir_empty($dir)) {
  echo "the folder is empty"; 
}else{
  echo "the folder is NOT empty";
}

function is_dir_empty($dir) {
  return (count(scandir($dir)) == 2);
}

Note that this code is not the summit of efficiency, as it’s unnecessary to read all the files only to tell if directory is empty. So, the better version would be

function dir_is_empty($dir) {
  $handle = opendir($dir);
  while (false !== ($entry = readdir($handle))) {
    if ($entry != "." && $entry != "..") {
      closedir($handle);
      return false;
    }
  }
  closedir($handle);
  return true;
}

By the way, do not use words to substitute boolean values. The very purpose of the latter is to tell you if something empty or not. An

a === b

expression already returns Empty or Non Empty in terms of programming language, false or true respectively – so, you can use the very result in control structures like IF() without any intermediate values