Checking for file-extensions in PHP with Regular expressions

Question

I'm reading all the files in a single directory and I want to filter on JPG,JPEG,GIF and PNG.

Both capital and small letters. Those are the only files to be accepted.

I am currently using this:

$testPics = takeFiles($picsDir, "([^\s]+(?=\.(jpg|JPG|jpeg|JPEG|png|PNG|gif|GIF))\.\2)");

and the function takeFiles looks like this:

function takerFiles($dir, $rex="") {
    $dir .= "/";
    $files = array();
    $dp = opendir($dir);
    while ($file = readdir($dp)) {
      if ($file == '.')  continue;
      if ($file == '..') continue;
      if (is_dir($file)) continue;
      if ($rex!="" && !preg_match($rex, $file)) continue;
      $files[] = $file;
    }
    closedir($dp);
    return $files;
  }

And it always returns nothing. So something must be wrong with my regex code.

Answer 1

I think something is wrong with your regex. Try testing regexes here first: http://www.spaweditor.com/scripts/regex/index.php

I think this one might work for you:

/^.*\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$/i

Note the /i at the end - this is the "case insensitive" flag, saves you having to type out all permutations :)

Answer 2

You should put slashes around your regexp. -> "/(...)/"

Answer 3

How about using glob() instead?

$files = glob($dir . '*.{jpg,gif,png,jpeg}',GLOB_BRACE);

Answer 4

There are a few ways of doing this.

Have you tried glob()?:

$files = glob("{$picsDir}/*.{gif,jpeg,jpg,png}", GLOB_BRACE);

Have you considered pathinfo()?:

$info = pathinfo($file);
switch(strtolower($info['extension'])) {
    case 'jpeg':
    case 'jpg':
    case 'gif':
    case 'png':
        $files[] = $file;
        break;
}

If you're insistant upon using the regular expression, there's no need to match the whole filename, just the extension. Use the $ token to match the end of the string, and use the i flag to denote case-insensitivity. Also, don't forget to use a delimiter in your expression, in my case "%":

$rex = '%\.(gif|jpe?g|png)$%i';

Answer 5

Is there any reason you don't want to use scanDir and pathinfo?

public function scanForFiles($path, array $exts)
{
    $files = scanDir($path);
$return = array();

foreach($files as $file)
{
  if($file != '.' && $file != '..')
  {
    if(in_array(pathinfo($file, PATHINFO_EXTENSION), $exts))) {
          $return[] = $file;   
        }
  }
}

    return $return;
}

Sorry, not formatted so nicely. So you could also check if the file is a directory and do a recursive call to scan that directory. I wrote the code in haste so might not be 100% correct.

Answer 6

VERY useful stuff - thanks everyone.

Answer 7

Hi,

I want to blacklist file extensions, i searched the internet but nothing works.

I am looking for something like:

/^.*\.(^exe|^rar|^pdf|^zip)$/i