This little program reads a directory of files, and prints out a
random thumbnail from that directory.

I cleaned it to shorten as much as possible.

I have two questions:
1) How can I make it shorter and remain readable. (I know there must
be faster methods and shorter code).

2) I want to require this file at the beginning of a page, get my
directory array just once, let some html pass and then run the
function later a few times. When I tried that, I could not get the
$filesread array to carry over to the function (a scope issue i
guess).
I just don't want to repeat reading the directory files into the array
every time I call the function.

For reference this file the working file is at: http://styletattoo.com/new.php.
Hopefully the code will post verbatim/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<?
function RandomStencil()
{
$path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
$fullpath = $path . "/stencil/thumb/";

//-----open the directory
$d=$fullpath; #define which dir you want to read
$dir = opendir($d); #open directory

//-----read all files into an array while removing the 'th.gif' from
the end of each filename
while ($f = readdir($dir))
{$filesread[] = str_replace("th.gif", "", $f);}

//-----sort and shift off the two . and .. files
sort($filesread,SORT_NUMERIC);
$trash=array_shift($filesread);
$trash=array_shift($filesread);

//-----choose a random stencil and print it with link to big stencil
page
$countera = count($filesread);
srand ((double) microtime() * 1000000);
$randomstencil = rand(0,countera-1);
$randstenc = $filesread[$randomstencil];
print ("<a href='stencil/stencil.php?image=" . $randstenc . "'
title=''><img class='navlastimg' border='0' src='stencil/thumb/" .
$randstenc . "th.gif' alt='' /></a>");
}
?>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Feb 25, 3:50pm, howdy <i...@mauicomputer.com> wrote:
> This little program reads a directory of files, and prints out a
> random thumbnail from that directory.
>
> I cleaned it to shorten as much as possible.
>
> I have two questions:
> 1) How can I make it shorter and remain readable. (I know there must
> be faster methods and shorter code).
>
> 2) I want to require this file at the beginning of a page, get my
> directory array just once, let some html pass and then run the
> function later a few times. When I tried that, I could not get the
> $filesread array to carry over to the function (a scope issue i
> guess).
> I just don't want to repeat reading the directory files into the array
> every time I call the function.
>
> For reference this file the working file is at:http://styletattoo.com/new.php.
> Hopefully the code will post verbatim/
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> <?
> function RandomStencil()
> {
> $path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
> $fullpath = $path . "/stencil/thumb/";
>
> //-----open the directory
> $d=$fullpath; #define which dir you want to read
> $dir = opendir($d); #open directory
>
> //-----read all files into an array while removing the 'th.gif' from
> the end of each filename
> while ($f = readdir($dir))
> {$filesread[] = str_replace("th.gif", "", $f);}
>
> //-----sort and shift off the two . and .. files
> sort($filesread,SORT_NUMERIC);
> $trash=array_shift($filesread);
> $trash=array_shift($filesread);
>
> //-----choose a random stencil and print it with link to big stencil
> page
> $countera = count($filesread);
> srand ((double) microtime() * 1000000);
> $randomstencil = rand(0,countera-1);
> $randstenc = $filesread[$randomstencil];
> print ("<a href='stencil/stencil.php?image=" . $randstenc . "'
> title=''><img class='navlastimg' border='0' src='stencil/thumb/" .
> $randstenc . "th.gif' alt='' /></a>");
> }
> ?>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The simple one that I see, is to take


$path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
$fullpath = $path . "/stencil/thumb/";

//-----open the directory
$d=$fullpath; #define which dir you want to read
$dir = opendir($d); #open directory

And change that to:

$dir = opendir( $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/stencil/thumb" );

And move the while loop for reading the directory to be one line:

while ($f = readdir($dir)) $filesread[] =
str_replace("th.gif", "", $f);

Also, it looks like, later in your print statement, you're just
stuffing that th.gif right back on.
The following is only if you expect there to be no missing numbers:

while( $f = readdir( $dir ) ) $filesread[] = $f;

You also don't need to store those things that you're popping off the
top of the array,

sort($filesread,SORT_NUMERIC);
array_shift($filesread);
array_shift($filesread);

No need to waste memory there, or with the counter for that matter.

$countera = count($filesread);
srand ((double) microtime() * 1000000);
$randomstencil = rand(0,countera-1);

Becomes

srand ((double) microtime() * 1000000);
$randomstencil = rand( 0, count($filesread) - 1 );

So you're final code would look something like:
<?
function RandomStencil()
{
//-----open the directory
$dir = opendir( $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . "/stencil/
thumb/" ); #open directory

//-----read all files into an array while removing the 'th.gif' from
the end of each filename
while ($f = readdir($dir)) $filesread[] = $f;

//-----sort and shift off the two . and .. files
sort($filesread,SORT_NUMERIC);
array_shift($filesread);
array_shift($filesread);

//-----choose a random stencil and print it with link to big stencil
page
srand ((double) microtime() * 1000000);
$randomstencil = rand(0, count($filesread) - 1);
$randstenc = $filesread[$randomstencil];
print ("<a href='stencil/stencil.php?image=" . $randstencil .
"' title=''><img class='navlastimg' border='0' src='stencil/thumb/" ..
$randstenc . "th.gif' alt='' /></a>");
}
?>
----------------------------------------
And I probably missed more here (or made something unreadable for
someone as well) so I wouldn't be surprised if you got other people
saying different things.