One great way to incorporate more OOP into your applications is through the Standard PHP Library (SPL), a powerful yet largely unknown extension made part of the official PHP language with the PHP 5.0 release. [...] In this tutorial I'll introduce you to several of my favorite SPL iterators, providing you with the basis from which you can continue your own exploration. Following several examples, I'll conclude with a brief introduction to other key SPL features.

He looks at how to use the ArrayIterator, DirectoryIterator, SimpleXMLIterator and mentions some of the other handlers for things like advanced data structures, exceptions and more file handling.

SPL provides a standard set of interfaces for PHP5. The aim of SPL is to implement some efficient data access interfaces and classes for PHP. Functionally it is designed to traverse aggregate structures (anything you want to loop over). These may include arrays, database result sets, xml trees, directory listings or any list at all. Currently SPL deals with Iterators.

He looks at functionality like the Directory Iterator, getting the file owner, checking to see if a file is valid and how to rewind an iterator.

One of PHP5's most interesting new features is the addition of Iterators, a collection of ready-made interfaces designed to help in navigating and processing hierarchical data structures. These Iterators significantly reduce the amount of code required to process an XML document tree or a file collection.

They give three examples - two basic ones showing a simple use of the DirectoryIterator and RecursiveDirectoryIterator and another slightly more complex one showing how to get information from the recursive iteration as it goes down.

Since in the first part of the series I showed you how to create a proxy class for processing simple XML strings, in this installment I'm going to teach you how to create a proxy object that can be used in conjunction with the "DirectoryIterator" class that comes with PHP 5.

They start with the definition of a proxy class, the base to start from, and improve its functionality through additional methods like getSize, getPath, and getTimeStamps (using the iterators). The complete the development by pulling the parts together and creating a final example that loops through a given path and displays various info about the directory/files inside (size, names, timestamp, etc).

Are you interested in having at your disposal a quick reference for working with the "DirectoryIterator" class that comes with PHP 5? Then this might be the article that you've been waiting for! Welcome to the second tutorial of the series "A Close Look at the DirectoryIterator Class in PHP 5." Over the course of this set of installments, you'll find complete coverage of the most important methods bundled with this class, and learn how to take advantage of their excellent functionality.

They cover even more functions in this part:

• rewind, current, valid
• getFileName, isFile
• getMTime, getATime, getCTime
• getPath, getPathName

Because this class might be handy to use in projects where handling directories is a must, in this new series I'll be taking a close look at some of its most important methods. We will explore these methods appropriately in conjunction with the corresponding code samples.

They introduce the class, noting why it's handy to use and where's the best place to use it - including an example. They get into a bit more detail, looking at the key() and current() methods as well as using the rewind() method to reset the pointer for the directory.

They describe the functionality and provide a simple example of its use. Also included are the other functions you can use with the resulting file handles to make for a cleaner interface in your script. They also include two examples of its usage with the output it would give - getting some stats on selected files.