How to get X newest files from a directory in PHP?

Question

The code below is part of a function for grabbing 5 image files from a given directory.

At the moment readdir returns the images \'in the order in which they are sto

Answer 1

If you want to do this entirely in PHP, you must find all the files and their last modification times:

$images = array();
foreach (scandir($folder) as $node) {
    $nodePath = $folder . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $node;
    if (is_dir($nodePath)) continue;
    $images[$nodePath] = filemtime($nodePath);
}
arsort($images);
$newest = array_slice($images, 0, 5);

Answer 2

If you are really only interested in pictures you could use glob() instead of soulmerge's scandir:

$images = array();
foreach (glob("*.{png,jpg,jpeg}", GLOB_BRACE) as $filename) {
    $images[$filename] = filemtime($filename);
}
arsort($images);
$newest = array_slice($images, 0, 5);

Answer 3

Or you can create function for the latest 5 files in specified folder.

private function getlatestfivefiles() {
    $files = array();
    foreach (glob("application/reports/*.*", GLOB_BRACE) as $filename) {
        $files[$filename] = filemtime($filename);
    }
    arsort($files);

    $newest = array_slice($files, 0, 5);
    return $newest;  
}

btw im using CI framework. cheers!