Question

What would be the best way to scan a remote directory’s filenames using only PHP?

Answer 1

I use a recurrence function:

function getDirectoryTree ( $outerDir, $x ) {
    $dirs = array_diff ( scandir ( $outerDir ), Array ( ".", ".." ) );
    foreach ( $dirs as $d ) {
      if ( is_dir ( $outerDir . "/" . $d ) ) {
        getDirectoryTree ( $outerDir . "/" . $d, $x );
      }
      else {
        if ( ($x) ? ereg ($x . '$', $d) : 1 ) {
          $ftime = @filemtime ( $outerDir . '/' . $d );
          if ( ( $ftime !== FALSE ) && ( $ftime > time ( ) - 60*60*24*5 ) ) {
            echo date ('Y-m-d H:i', $ftime ) . ' ' . $outerDir . '/' . $d . '<BR>';
          }  
        }
      }  
    }

} 

getDirectoryTree ( '../', 'php' );

It show (echo) all php files what was changed in last 5 days…

And be easily adjust to your needs