January 14th, 2009

PHP Code To Check If A Directory Is Empty

While dealing with files and directories in PHP you will most likely at some point want to check if a folder/directory is empty. To do this, you need to write a script that does the check. There are two ways of doing this. The first is supported in PHP 4 and 5 only and the second will only work if you are running PHP 5 on your server. Here they are:

Method 1:

This code works with PHP 4 and PHP 5.

// Open directory and create an object
// The dir() function creates the object
$directory = dir('path_to_directory');

// Loop while the read method goes through each and
// every file
while ((FALSE !== ($item = $directory->read())) && ( ! isset($directory_not_empty)))
{
	// If an item is not "." and "..", then something
	// exists in the directory and it is not empty
	if ($item != '.' && $item != '..')
	{
		$directory_not_empty = TRUE;
	}
}

// Close the directory
$directory->close();

Method 2:

Although the code below is a lot neater and lighter, it will only work with PHP 5.

// Scans the path for directories and if there are more than 2
// directories i.e. "." and ".." then the directory is not empty
if ( ($files = @scandir('path_to_directory') && (count($files) > 2) )
{
	$directory_not_empty = TRUE;
}

And there you have it. Two simple ways of checking if a directory is empty. Let me know if you found this useful in the comment block below.

6 Comments

• 

  Geoff, June 24, 2009:

  In Method 1, I think you mean:

  if ($item != ‘.’ && $item != ‘..’)

• 

  Matt, June 24, 2009:

  Hey Geoff,

  Thanks for the comment.

  EDIT: You are correct, I have changed the code.

• 

  Andy P, November 13, 2009:

  Method 1:

  No, Geoff is right – think about it…

  if the filename is not ‘.’ AND not ‘..’ then it MUST be a file or directory (i.e. not the current dir or parent dir)

  $item can’t be equal to ‘.’ and ‘..’ at the same time, so ($item != ‘.’ || $item != ‘..’) will ALWAYS evaluate to TRUE!

  Also you need to set
  $directory_empty = TRUE;
  at the beginning, otherwise $directory_empty will remain unset and therefore always == FALSE

• 

  Matthias Hogerheijde, December 8, 2009:

  Method 1 is a bit inefficient:

  When you found 1 file or directory you can stop looping, you will loop trough the entire directory for all files in it. Won’t be a problem with a small amount, but still. I would suggest something like:

  $directory_empty = true;
  $directory = dir(’path_to_directory’);
  while ($empty && FALSE !== ($item = $directory->read())) {
  if ($item != ‘.’ && $item != ‘..’) {
  $directory_empty = false;
  }
  }

  Furthermore, you forgot to declare $directory_empty and initialize it to true, both your methods will always result in a filled directory

• 

  Matthias Hogerheijde, December 8, 2009:

  indentation doesn’t seem to take…

  and i wrote a mistake myself: it should be
  while ($directory_empty [...]

• 

  Matt, December 8, 2009:

  I have updated the code in the above post to a more comprehensive example.