PHP for automatically generating file/link list with file titles

[wmjsimpson]

I keep a website for all my classes, and one of the pages is a Downloads page where students can get all the documents I pass out in class. In the past, I manually added to the list in a normal HTML document, but I'd like to switch to PHP so the list is generated automatically. I tried the script below and it works just fine, but it generates a list of file names. Is it possible to have this (or another code) generate the actual file titles? For example, it'd be easier for my students to see Chapter 1 Vocabulary rather than av1_ch1_vocab.pdf.

I'm fairly clueless when it comes to PHP, but I can copy and paste and work with typical HTML. I'd really appreciate your help in shaving off a few minutes of website updating every day!

The current PHP I'm using is:


<ul>
<?

// Define the full path to your folder from root
$path = "/rhsfrench/downloads/";

// Open the folder
$dir_handle = @opendir($path) or die("Unable to open $path");

// Loop through the files
while ($file = readdir($dir_handle)) {

if($file == "." || $file == ".." || $file == "index.php" )

continue;
echo "<li><a href=\"$file\">$file</a></li>";

}

// Close
closedir($dir_handle);

?>
</ul>

[jthayne]

If you are consistent in your file names, you can create the display name based on the actual file name.

For example:

File Name: av1_ch1_vocab.pdf

PHP code to get the Display Name of each file:

PHP Code:

// Loop through the files
while ($file = readdir($dir_handle)) {
    if($file == "." || $file == ".." || $file == "index.php" ) {
        continue;
    }

    $fn = explode("_", $file);

    $fn[1] = substr($fn[1], 2);
    $name = "Chapter " . $fn[1];

    switch ($fn[2]) {
    case 'vocab':               /* <---- Add a new case for each type of file */
        $name .= " Vocabulary";
        break;
    default:                    /* <---- Place the default name here for those file you forgot to add a case statement for or just don't fit. */
        $name .= " Summary";
    }

    echo "<li><a href='".$file."'>".$name."</a></li>";
} 


Let me know if you have any further questions about it.