Array of paths to html lists

I wrote a recursive function, which returns an array with the paths to all files/folders in a given path. An array is already sorted and returns the exact information i want, but i struggle to display it properly in html lists.

Array_of_paths = ( 
[0] => /path/to/folderA/
[1] => /path/to/folderA/subfolderAA/
[2] => /path/to/folderB/
[3] => /path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/
[4] => /path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/fileBB.txt
[5] => /path/to/folderB/fileB.txt
[6] => /path/to/folderC/
...
)

I want to put these paths in <ul>,<li> tags to see something like this:

   <ul>
     <li>/path/to/folderA/
         <ul>
           <li>/path/to/folderA/folderAA/</li>
         </ul>
     </li>
     <li>/path/to/folderB
         <ul>
           <li>/path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/
             <ul>
               <li>/path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/fileBB.txt</li>
             </ul>
           </li>
           <li>/path/to/folderB/fileB.txt</li>
         </ul>
     </li>
     <li>/path/to/folderC/</li>
   &开发者_如何学Golt;/ul>

=>

<ul>
     <li>/path/to/folderA/
         <ul>
           <li>/path/to/folderA/folderAA/</li>
         </ul>
     </li>
     <li>/path/to/folderB
         <ul>
           <li>/path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/
             <ul>
               <li>/path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/fileBB.txt</li>
             </ul>
           </li>
           <li>/path/to/folderB/fileB.txt</li>
         </ul>
     </li>
     <li>/path/to/folderC/</li>
   </ul>

I managed to find a couple of similars questions, but the answers were in Ruby language. So, what's the problem solving idea behind this?

---

$lastD = 0;
foreach ($p as $e)
{
    $depth = substr_count($e, '/');
//if this is a file, then add one to the depth count
if (substr($e,-1) != '/')
    $depth++;

    if ($depth > $lastD)
    {
        echo "<ul>";
        $lastD = $depth;
    }

    if ($depth < $lastD)
    {
        echo "</ul>";
        $lastD = $depth;
    }
    echo "<li>$e";
}

Returns:

• /path/to/folderA/
  • /path/to/folderA/subfolderAA/
• /path/to/folderB/
  • /path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/
    • /path/to/folderB/subfolderBB/fileBB.txt
  • /path/to/folderB/fileB.txt
• /path/to/folderC/

---

If your are in PHP5, use RecursiveDirectoryIterator and RecursiveIteratorIterator to do the job.

$dir = new RecursiveDirectoryIterator("/path");
$it  = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($dir);

foreach ($it as $key => $value) {
    // Use $it->getDepth() and $value->getRealpath() 
    // with Byron's code to generate your list
}

---

I'm using this bit of code you published.

The structure of nested UL's is not quite right, so I just added a quick fix in order to have the closing ul tags so it can be used with more levels.

....

if ($depth < $lastD)
{
    $closingULs=$lastD-$depth;
    for($i=0;$i<$closingULs;$i++)
    {
      $uls.="</ul>";
    }
    echo $uls;
    $lastD = $depth;
}

---

IMHO it's better to store the data in a more efficient and more similar format, something hierarchical. You can explode() your array by / and create the tree via arrays, then it'll be easy to foreach the array and build the HTML list.

foreach ( $paths as $path )
{
    $pieces = explode('/', $path);
    foreach ( $pieces as $piece )
    {
        $pathtree[$piece] = '';
    }
}

This new $pathtree array is much smaller, probably 1/4th as small as your $paths array. From this point you just need to foreach it to build your HTML list tree.