Getting latest file from SFTP in PHP (using CURL)

Question

I've got this function to get files from a directory on an SFTP. It returns all files in the folder, but with a filetime that is hard to parse.

What I want is to get the latest modified file.

private function getDirList()
    {
        $ch = curl_init();
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $this -> host);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $this -> user . ":" . $this -> pass);
        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

        if (curl_exec($ch) === false) {
            echo 'Curl error: ' . curl_error($ch);
            exit();
        }

        curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, 'LIST');
        $result = trim(curl_exec($ch));
        $files = array();
        foreach (explode("\n", trim($result, "\n")) as $line) {
            $files[] = $line;
        }

        return $files;
    }

What I get from the function:

Array
(
    [0] => -rw-rw-rw-   1 user     group     4482926 Jan 19 01:30 file1.csv
    [1] => -rw-rw-rw-   1 user     group     4291169 Oct 21 00:33 file2.csv
    [2] => -rw-rw-rw-   1 user     group     4469721 Dec 14 01:30 file3.csv
    [3] => -rw-rw-rw-   1 user     group     4275439 Sep 28 00:30 file4.csv
    [4] => -rw-rw-rw-   1 user     group     4244881 Sep  6  2018 file5.csv
    [5] => -rw-rw-rw-   1 user     group     4310557 Nov  2 01:30 file6.csv
    [6] => -rw-rw-rw-   1 user     group     4310765 Nov  5 01:30 file7.csv
    [7] => -rw-rw-rw-   1 user     group     4245407 Sep 11 00:30 file8.csv
    [8] => -rw-rw-rw-   1 user     group     4198017 Sep  1  2018 file9.csv
    [9] => -rw-rw-rw-   1 user     group     4311228 Nov 10 01:31 file10.csv
...

Could I do a call for each file and get a better filetime? Could I send a different customrequest for a different listing?

Answer 1

Consider using phpseclib .

With it, you can use the following code:

$sftp = new phpseclib\Net\SFTP($hostname);

$sftp->login($username, $password) or die("Cannot login");

$files = $sftp->rawlist($path);

// filter out folders     
$files_only_callback = function($a) { return ($a["type"] == NET_SFTP_TYPE_REGULAR); };
$files = array_filter($files, $files_only_callback);

// sort by timestamp
usort($files, function($a, $b) { return $b["mtime"] - $a["mtime"]; });
// In PHP 7, you can use spaceship operator instead:
// usort($files, function($a, $b) { return $a["mtime"] <=> $b["mtime"]; }); 

// pick the latest file
$latest = $files[0]["filename"];

---

phpseclib does not need any installation. Just extract the source code package along with your code. Though to load the latest phpseclib 2.0, they recommend using Composer . If you do not want to rely on yet another library for loading, you can use the following code to load phpseclib:

spl_autoload_register(function ($class) {
    $file = stream_resolve_include_path(
        str_replace('\\', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR, $class).'.php');
    if ($file !== false) {
        require $file;
        return true;
    }
    return false;
});

$phpseclib_path = "phpseclib";
set_include_path(get_include_path() . PATH_SEPARATOR . $phpseclib_path);

(based on Test whether a file exists anywhere in the include path )

Answer 2

Simply use the below option to list the directory names.

curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_DIRLISTONLY, 1L);

Use curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_DIRLISTONLY); to the directories with all the information.