PHP hidden directories - Windows

Question

I'm attempting to add a feature to our intranet, which will allow users to log onto the intranet, and access documents stored within a Windows network SAN.

At the moment, I've successfully retrieved all the file and folder names within a specified users 'My Documents'.

I'm having difficulty removing hidden files and folders from the array. At the moment, I can remove all folders and files starting with ..

However on Windows, they're being marked as 'hidden' in the properties. I've googled and found lots of resources about how to mark a file as hidden, and how to hide files that start with a ., but none on how to remove hidden windows files / folders. One post on stackoverflow mentions to use DirectoryIterator, but at the moment, but haven't explained at all how to use it to check if a files marked as hidden.

We have over 1000 users, with approximately 500MB - 1GB of documents, with multiple layers of directories, so It needs to be relatively fast.

For clarification: During a recursive iteration on a Windows system, how can I find out whether a directory is hidden or not, without relying on a prepended . symbol?

Phil Cross · Answer 1 · 2014-03-10T13:17:32.973

Ok, so worked it out, with help from the exec() function, so use with care! I'm using CodeIgniter, so I've modified the directory_helper.php function slightly, as its installed on a windows box, it'll always need to check for the hidden files, but it should also work for non-codeigniter sites:

function directory_map($source_dir, $directory_depth = 0, $hidden = FALSE)
{
    if ($fp = @opendir($source_dir))
    {
        if(!$hidden)
        {
            $exclude = array();
            exec('dir "' . $source_dir . '" /ah /B', $exclude);
        }

        $filedata   = array();
        $new_depth  = $directory_depth - 1;
        $source_dir = rtrim($source_dir, DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR).DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;

        while (FALSE !== ($file = readdir($fp)))
        {
            // Remove '.', '..', and hidden files [optional]
            if ( ! trim($file, '.') OR ($hidden == FALSE && $file[0] == '.') OR ($hidden === FALSE && in_array($file, $exclude)))
            {
                continue;
            }

            if (($directory_depth < 1 OR $new_depth > 0) && @is_dir($source_dir.$file))
            {
                $filedata[$file] = directory_map($source_dir.$file.DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $new_depth, $hidden);
            }
            else
            {
                $filedata[] = $file;
            }
        }

        closedir($fp);
        return $filedata;
    }

    return FALSE;
}

This scanned 2207 files, and 446 folders in approx 11 seconds (Ages I know, but the best I could do). Tested it on 500 folders and 200 files, and did it in around 3 seconds.

Its a recursive function which will scan each non-hidden directory. The first thing it does is scan the current directory for all hidden files and folders using the exec('dir *directory* /ah /B') function.

It will then store the results in an array and make sure that the current file/directory being read isn't in that array.

PHP hidden directories - Windows

1 Answers1