PHP recursively find files and folders and create HTML - php

Question

Basically what I am trying to do is take a base directory (already defined) and recursively go down it, making a link in a navbar for files and a collapsible for directories; under the collapsible would be links for files in that directory and possibly more collapsibles for directories inside the directory. Here is what I have so far, which is not working:
foreach (new DirectoryIterator($dir) as $file) {
if ($file->isDot()) continue;
if ($file->isFile()) {
echo "<li>" . $file . "</li>"; /*This successfully
creates links named from all the files in the directory specified by $dir */
}
if ($file->isDir()) {
?>
<li class="no-padding">
<ul class="collapsible collapsible-accordion">
<li>
<a class="collapsible-header"><?php echo $file->getFilename(); ?></a>
<div class="collapsible-body">
<ul>
<?php
$dir2 = $file->getFilename();
foreach (new DirectoryIterator($dir."/".$dir2) as $file1) {
if ($file1->isDot()) continue;
if ($file1->isFile()) {
echo "<li>".$file1 . "</li>"; }
} ?>
</ul>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
<?php
}
}
?>
However, for some reason it seems a DirectoryIterator within a DirectoryIterator is no good (the $dir2 was for test purposes). Or I could have a syntax issue. The reason I want this to work this way is because I want the files to be contained in <li>file</li> html and the files under a directory to be in <li>file-in-folder</li> format.
If there is a better way to do this, please let me know! Thanks!
EDIT: I changed $1file to $file1 and it works fine, even appended the dir; however, I basically want something like a for loop that will keep creating the collapsibles within each other if there is still a directory present. Basically so it would automatically create the formatting if I had:
Dir1 (main) >
File 1 //link
File 2 //link
Dir 1 > //collapsible header
File 1.1 //collapsible button
File 1.2 //...
Dir 2 >
File 2.1
File 2.2
Dir 3
Without me having to write 10 nested DirectoryIterators, just in case you can go down that far.

Answer 1

I think you are using an invalid variable name. PHP accepts variables starting with letters and underscore followed by other chars. Try $file1 instead of $1file
Cheers!
http://php.net/manual/en/language.variables.basics.php

Answer 2

This is my logic, probably you can get some idea from here.
if your main folder looks like this
then here is the code to get the folder structures.
echo '<pre>';
$dir='folders';
$files = array_slice(scandir($dir), 2);
foreach($files as $k=>$file){
$dir1=$dir.'/'.$file;
if(is_dir($dir1)){
$files1 = array_slice(scandir($dir1), 2);
if(!$files1){
$FOLDERS[$file]=$file;
}else{
foreach($files1 as $kk=>$file1){
$dir2=$dir1.'/'.$file1;
$files2 = array_slice(scandir($dir2), 2);
if(!$files2){
$FOLDERS[$file][$file1]=$file1;
}else{
foreach($files2 as $file2){
$FOLDERS[$file][$file1][$file2]=$file2;
}
}
}
}
}
}
print_r($FOLDERS);
Output:
Array
(
[folder1] => folder1
[folder2] => Array
(
[folder3] => Array
(
[folder4] => folder4
)
[folder5] => folder5
[folder6] => folder6
)
)
i used it only to scan the folders, you can extend it according to your needs.