2007
07.13

Randomly Select Photos From a Folder with PHP

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Joe Adu asked me how he could put photos in a folder and have php randomly choose one of the photos and display them. Then if more photos are added to the folder they would automatically enter in to the rotation.

###Step 1: Looping through a directory with php:

  $dir = '/absolute/path/to/folder/on/server';
  $files = array();
 
  if(is_dir($dir)) {
 
    if ($handle = opendir($dir)) {
 
        while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle))) {
            $files[] = $file;
        }
 
        closedir($handle);
    }
    else{
      echo "Could not open dir: $dir \n";
      exit;
    }
  }
  else{
    echo "'$dir' is not a valid directory\n";
    exit;
  }

This fills the array called “$files” with all of the files in the directory.

###Step 2: Randomly select a file

    $randomFile = $files[rand(0,count($files) - 1)];

This selects a photo at random in one line

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