Array of paths to html lists - php

Question

I wrote a recursive function, which returns an array with the paths to all files/folders in a given path. An array is already sorted and returns the exact information i want, but i struggle to display it properly in html lists.
Array_of_paths = (
[0] => /path/to/folderA/
[1] => /path/to/folderA/subfolderAA/
[2] => /path/to/folderB/
[3] => /path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/
[4] => /path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/fileBB.txt
[5] => /path/to/folderB/fileB.txt
[6] => /path/to/folderC/
...
)
I want to put these paths in <ul>,<li> tags to see something like this:
<ul>
<li>/path/to/folderA/
<ul>
<li>/path/to/folderA/folderAA/</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>/path/to/folderB
<ul>
<li>/path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/
<ul>
<li>/path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/fileBB.txt</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>/path/to/folderB/fileB.txt</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>/path/to/folderC/</li>
</ul>
=>
<ul>
<li>/path/to/folderA/
<ul>
<li>/path/to/folderA/folderAA/</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>/path/to/folderB
<ul>
<li>/path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/
<ul>
<li>/path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/fileBB.txt</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>/path/to/folderB/fileB.txt</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>/path/to/folderC/</li>
</ul>
I managed to find a couple of similars questions, but the answers were in Ruby language. So, what's the problem solving idea behind this?

Answer 1

$lastD = 0;
foreach ($p as $e)
{
$depth = substr_count($e, '/');
//if this is a file, then add one to the depth count
if (substr($e,-1) != '/')
$depth++;
if ($depth > $lastD)
{
echo "<ul>";
$lastD = $depth;
}
if ($depth < $lastD)
{
echo "</ul>";
$lastD = $depth;
}
echo "<li>$e";
}
Returns:
/path/to/folderA//path/to/folderA/subfolderAA//path/to/folderB//path/to/folderB/subfolderBB//path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/fileBB.txt/path/to/folderB/fileB.txt/path/to/folderC/

Answer 2

If your are in PHP5, use RecursiveDirectoryIterator and RecursiveIteratorIterator to do the job.
$dir = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator("/path");
$it = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($dir);
foreach ($it as $key => $value) {
// Use $it->getDepth() and $value->getRealpath()
// with Byron's code to generate your list
}

Answer 3

I'm using this bit of code you published.
The structure of nested UL's is not quite right, so I just added a quick fix in order to have the closing ul tags so it can be used with more levels.
....
if ($depth < $lastD)
{
$closingULs=$lastD-$depth;
for($i=0;$i<$closingULs;$i++)
{
$uls.="</ul>";
}
echo $uls;
$lastD = $depth;
}

Answer 4

IMHO it's better to store the data in a more efficient and more similar format, something hierarchical. You can explode() your array by / and create the tree via arrays, then it'll be easy to foreach the array and build the HTML list.
foreach ( $paths as $path )
{
$pieces = explode('/', $path);
foreach ( $pieces as $piece )
{
$pathtree[$piece] = '';
}
}
This new $pathtree array is much smaller, probably 1/4th as small as your $paths array. From this point you just need to foreach it to build your HTML list tree.