php glob - scan in subfolders for a file

Question

I have a server with a lot of files inside various folders, sub-folders, and sub-sub-folders.

I'm trying to make a search.php page that would be used to search the whole server for a specific file. If the file is found, then return the location path to display a download link.

Here's what i have so far:

$root = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
$search = "test.zip";
$found_files = glob("$root/*/test.zip");
$downloadlink = str_replace("$root/", "", $found_files[0]);
if (!empty($downloadlink)) {
    echo "<a href=\"http://www.example.com/$downloadlink\">$search</a>";
} 

The script is working perfectly if the file is inside the root of my domain name... Now i'm trying to find a way to make it also scan sub-folders and sub-sub-folders but i'm stuck here.

Answer 1

There are 2 ways.

Use glob to do recursive search:

<?php
 
// Does not support flag GLOB_BRACE
function rglob($pattern, $flags = 0) {
    $files = glob($pattern, $flags); 
    foreach (glob(dirname($pattern).'/*', GLOB_ONLYDIR|GLOB_NOSORT) as $dir) {
        $files = array_merge(
            [],
            ...[$files, rglob($dir . "/" . basename($pattern), $flags)]
        );
    }
    return $files;
}

// usage: to find the test.zip file recursively
$result = rglob($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/test.zip');
var_dump($result);
// to find the all files that names ends with test.zip
$result = rglob($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/*test.zip');
?>

Use RecursiveDirectoryIterator

<?php
// $regPattern should be using regular expression
function rsearch($folder, $regPattern) {
    $dir = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator($folder);
    $ite = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($dir);
    $files = new RegexIterator($ite, $regPattern, RegexIterator::GET_MATCH);
    $fileList = array();
    foreach($files as $file) {
        $fileList = array_merge($fileList, $file);
    }
    return $fileList;
}

// usage: to find the test.zip file recursively
$result = rsearch($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'], '/.*\/test\.zip/'));
var_dump($result);
?>

RecursiveDirectoryIterator comes with PHP5 while glob is from PHP4. Both can do the job, it's up to you.