Can this code to loop through photos in a folder be optimised? - php

Question

I have written this code having not used PHP for 2 years now to loop through a folder of photos and write them to the page in alphabetical order. It is a fairly simple request but it took me the best part of 15 minutes to write.
if ($handle = opendir('photos')) {
$count = 0;
$list[] = array();
while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
if ($file != "." && $file != "..") {
$list[$count] = $file;
$count ++;
}
}
closedir($handle);
asort($list);
$sorted_list = array();
$sorted_list = array_values($list);
foreach ($sorted_list as $i => $value) {
echo "<li><img src=\"photos/$sorted_list[$i]\" alt=\"$sorted_list[$i]\" title=\"\"></li>\n";
}
}
Have I written it totally the wrong way? Are there ways I can improve the code? Any constructive feedback gladly received.

Answer 1

You could take advantage of the scandir() function, which will handle reading the directory as well as sorting the results.
$files = scandir('photos');
if ($files !== false)
{
foreach($files as $f) {
if ($f == '..' || $f == '.') continue;
echo '<li><img src="photos/'.$f.'" alt="'.$f.'" title=""></li>'."\n";
}
}
I edited it a bit for readability.

Answer 2

Try this:
$photos = glob('photos/*');
foreach($photos as $photo) {
echo "<li><img src=\"{$photo}" alt=\"{$photo}\" title=\"\"></li>\n";
}
http://us.php.net/manual/en/function.glob.php

Answer 3

You don't need the $count. This will give you the same result
$list[] = array();
while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
if ($file != "." && $file != "..") {
$list[] = $file;
}
}
Replace sorting and displaying with just:
sort($list);
for ($i = 0; $i < count($list); $i++) {
echo "<li><img src=\"photos/{$list[$i]}\" alt=\"{$list[$i]}\" title=\"\"></li>\n";
}

Answer 4

You can replace
foreach ($sorted_list as $i => $value) {
echo "<li><img src=\"photos/$sorted_list[$i]\" alt=\"$sorted_list[$i]\" title=\"\"></li>\n";
}
with
foreach ($sorted_list as $value) {
echo "<li><img src=\"photos/$value\" alt=\"$value\" title=\"\"></li>\n";
}
Then you don't need to call array_values(), because it doesn't matter that the array keys aren't in numeric order.

Answer 5

A simplier way is using the scandir function:
$dir = 'photos';
$files = array_diff( scandir($dir), array(".", "..") );
foreach ($files as $i => $value) {
echo "<li><img src=\"photos/$value\" alt=\"$value\" title=\"\"></li>\n";
}
good luck!