PHP recursive directory menu

Question

I think similar questions have been asked before, but I can't quite wrap my head around whether what I want to do is logicaly possible.

I currently use DDSmoothMenu on our intranet to list documents that we have for all staff to access.

Menu structure would be something like:

Documents -> Finance -> Forms -> File 1
                              -> File 2
                              -> File 3
                     -> Informational -> File 1
                                      -> File 2
          -> Insurance -> File 1
                       -> File 2

The basic structure of the menu is below:

<ul>
  <li><a href='#'>Sub Menu Name</a>
    <ul>
      <li><a href='#'>Menu Item</a></li>
      <li><a href='#'>Menu Item</a></li>
      <li><a href='#'>Menu Item</a></li>
      <li><a href='#'>Menu Item</a></li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

I think it would have to involve some kind of multidimensional array and a recursive directory iterator, but I would like to go through each folder and create the HTML layout as above.

I think it may be possible to do the opening tags, but not sure how to then do the closing tags once that directory is all listed.

Answer 1

A recursive solution could look something like:

function createMenuHTML($dir){
    $html = "";
    if(is_dir($dir)){
        //Directory - add sub menu
        $html .= "<li><a href='#'>Sub Menu Name</a><ul>";
        if ($dh = opendir($dir)) {
            while (($file = readdir($dh)) !== false) {
                $html .= createMenuHTML($dir.$file);
            }
            closedir($dh);
        }
        $html .= "</ul>"
    }else{
        //File so  just add list item
        $html .= "<li><a href='#'>".basename($dir)."</a></li>"
    }
    return $html;
}

This is entirely untested but should hopefully help.

Answer 2

The easier way is use trees. I recommendNested model You can check current and perv lvl of item.

Answer 3

Ok, so here is what I ended up with thanks to Jim's example code:

    function createMenu($dir) {
    if(is_dir($dir)) {
        echo "<li><a href='#'>".basename($dir)."</a><ul>";
        foreach(glob("$dir/*") as $path) {
            createMenuHTML($path);
        }
        echo "</ul></li>";
    }
    else {
        $extension = pathinfo($dir);
        $extension = $extension['extension'];
        echo "<li><a href='$dir'>".basename($dir, ".".$extension)."</a></li>";
    }
}

createMenu("/public/Documents");

Works like an absolute charm for my DDSMoothMenu, and I can be as general or as granular as I want when using the function to create the menu.

I will mark this as the answer, but Jim gave me the best starting point possible code wise!