How can I download the most recent file on FTP with PHP?

Question

On FTP server has some files. For any hour on this server is uploading new files. I'd like to download last file. How can I get last uploaded file from this server? All files are with different names.

I used folowing script to downloading one file.

$conn = ftp_connect("ftp.testftp.com") or die("Could not connect");
ftp_login($conn,"user","pass");
ftp_get($conn,"target.txt","source.txt",FTP_ASCII);
ftp_close($conn);

Thanks in advance !!!

Answer 1

There is no way to be sure which file is the most recent, as there is no such thing as an "uploaded time" attribute. You didn't mention much about the FTP server, but if you have some level of management over the uploads, you could ensure that the last modified time is set on upload. Whether this ends up working is down to your FTP server and possibly clients.

Assuming your modified times are equivalent to upload times, you could do something like this:

// connect
$conn = ftp_connect('ftp.addr.com');
ftp_login($conn, 'user', 'pass');

// get list of files on given path
$files = ftp_nlist($conn, '');

$mostRecent = array(
    'time' => 0,
    'file' => null
);

foreach ($files as $file) {
    // get the last modified time for the file
    $time = ftp_mdtm($conn, $file);

    if ($time > $mostRecent['time']) {
        // this file is the most recent so far
        $mostRecent['time'] = $time;
        $mostRecent['file'] = $file;
    }
}

ftp_get($conn, "target.txt", $mostRecent['file'], FTP_ASCII);
ftp_close($conn);