filegroup

fileatime

[edit] Last updated: Fri, 11 May 2012

filectime

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

filectime — Gets inode change time of file

Description

int filectime ( string $filename )

Gets the inode change time of a file.

Parameters

filename: Path to the file.

Return Values

Returns the time the file was last changed, or FALSE on failure. The time is returned as a Unix timestamp.

Examples

Example #1 A filectime() example


<?php

// outputs e.g.  somefile.txt was last changed: December 29 2002 22:16:23.

$filename = 'somefile.txt';
if (file_exists($filename)) {
    echo "$filename was last changed: " . date("F d Y H:i:s.", filectime($filename));
}

?>

Errors/Exceptions

Upon failure, an E_WARNING is emitted.

Notes

Note:
Note: In most Unix filesystems, a file is considered changed when its inode data is changed; that is, when the permissions, owner, group, or other metadata from the inode is updated. See also filemtime() (which is what you want to use when you want to create "Last Modified" footers on web pages) and fileatime().

Note:
Note also that in some Unix texts the ctime of a file is referred to as being the creation time of the file. This is wrong. There is no creation time for Unix files in most Unix filesystems.

Note:
Note that time resolution may differ from one file system to another.

Note: The results of this function are cached. See clearstatcache() for more details.

Tip

As of PHP 5.0.0, this function can also be used with some URL wrappers. Refer to Supported Protocols and Wrappers to determine which wrappers support stat() family of functionality.


Filemtime seems to return the date of the EARLIEST modified file inside a folder, so this is a recursive function to return the date of the LAST (most recently) modified file inside a folder.



<?php



// Only take into account those files whose extensions you want to show.

$allowedExtensions = array(

  'zip',

  'rar',

  'pdf',

  'txt'

);



function filemtime_r($path)

{

    global $allowedExtensions;

    

    if (!file_exists($path))

        return 0;

    

    $extension = end(explode(".", $path));     

    if (is_file($path) && in_array($extension, $allowedExtensions))

        return filemtime($path);

    $ret = 0;

    

     foreach (glob($path."/*") as $fn)

     {

        if (filemtime_r($fn) > $ret)

            $ret = filemtime_r($fn);    

            // This will return a timestamp, you will have to use date().

     }

    return $ret;    

}



?>

rich at rmbwebs dot com 11-Mar-2008 12:07


This is a modification of simraLIAS at mac dot com's code.

Modification dates should not be used for keys in an array when sorting by date because there is no guarantee that all files will have different dates.  Collisions resulting in files missing from the list could be possible.  A better way is to use the filename as the key (guaranteed to not be collisions)



<?php

foreach (glob("../downloads/*") as $path) { //configure path

    $docs[$path] = filectime($path);

} asort($docs); // sort by value, preserving keys



foreach ($docs as $path => $timestamp) {

    print date("d. M. Y: ", $timestamp);

    print '<a href="'. $path .'">'. basename($path) .'</a><br />';

}

?>

simraLIAS at mac dot com 30-Nov-2007 03:24


This is another way to get a list of files ordered by upload time:



<?php

foreach (glob("../downloads/*") as $path) { //configure path

    $docs[filectime($path)] = $path;

} ksort($docs); // sort by key (timestamp)



foreach ($docs as $timestamp => $path) {

    print date("d. M. Y: ", $timestamp);

    print '<a href="'. $path .'">'. basename($path) .'</a><br />'; 

}

?>

chuck dot reeves at gmail dot com 02-Oct-2007 09:14


filectime running on windows reading a file from a samba share, will still show the last modified date.

website at us dot kaspersky dot com 31-Aug-2007 10:51


Line 37 of the code above has an error.



echo  "File name: $file - Date Added: $date. <br/>"";  



There is an extra "  after the <br/> that needs to be deleted in order for this code to work.

StevieMc at example dot com 15-Nov-2006 06:28


This method gets all the files in a directory, and echoes them in the order of the date they were added (by ftp or whatever).



<?PHP

function dirList ($directory, $sortOrder){



    //Get each file and add its details to two arrays

    $results = array();

    $handler = opendir($directory);

    while ($file = readdir($handler)) {  

        if ($file != '.' && $file != '..' && $file != "robots.txt" && $file != ".htaccess"){

            $currentModified = filectime($directory."/".$file);

            $file_names[] = $file;

            $file_dates[] = $currentModified;

        }    

    }

       closedir($handler);



    //Sort the date array by preferred order

    if ($sortOrder == "newestFirst"){

        arsort($file_dates);

    }else{

        asort($file_dates);

    }

    

    //Match file_names array to file_dates array

    $file_names_Array = array_keys($file_dates);

    foreach ($file_names_Array as $idx => $name) $name=$file_names[$name];

    $file_dates = array_merge($file_dates);

    

    $i = 0;



    //Loop through dates array and then echo the list

    foreach ($file_dates as $file_dates){

        $date = $file_dates;

        $j = $file_names_Array[$i];

        $file = $file_names[$j];

        $i++;

            

        echo  "File name: $file - Date Added: $date. <br/>"";        

    }



}

?>



I hope this is useful to somebody.

gyrbo[at]yahoo[dot]com 21-Sep-2002 04:35


filectime doesn't seem to be working properly on Win32 systems (it seems to return the creation time). Try using filemtime if you have problems.

laurent dot pireyn at wanadoo dot be 27-Sep-2001 05:01


If you use filectime with a symbolic link, you will get the change time of the file actually linked to. To get informations about the link self, use lstat.

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