Backend Development 2 min read

PHP opendir Function: Opening Directory Handles

This article explains PHP's opendir function, which opens a directory handle for subsequent closedir, readdir, and rewinddir operations, details its parameters and return values, and provides a complete example script demonstrating how to read directory contents and output file names with their types.

Laravel Tech Community
Laravel Tech Community
Laravel Tech Community
PHP opendir Function: Opening Directory Handles

The opendir function in PHP opens a directory handle that can be used with closedir() , readdir() , and rewinddir() for directory traversal.

Parameters

path : The directory path to open.

context : Optional context resource.

Return value

On success, it returns a resource representing the directory handle; on failure, it returns FALSE .

Example

<?php
$dir = "/etc/php5/";
// Open a known directory, and proceed to read its contents
if (is_dir($dir)) {
    $dh = opendir($dir);
    while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
        echo "filename: $file : filetype: " . filetype($dir . $file) . "\n";
    }
    closedir($dh);
}
?>

The script checks that the directory exists, opens it with opendir , iterates over each entry using readdir , prints the filename and its type via filetype , and finally closes the handle with closedir .

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