Listing files in a directory with Rails

Greg Winn — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:17:05 +0000

In a recent application I am building I needed to pull file names and directory names from a local directory. I searched all over the net for this and found nothing. After reviewing a few of rails built in functions I came across Dir.glob(). If you feed this method a path to a directory it will then come back with an array of the names and directories listed.

So lets say I am going to tell Dir.glob to look in my “files” folder. The path I need to feed it is starting from the root of my app so the path would be “public/files/”.

1	@files = Dir.glob("public/files/*")

I added “*” so I can pull all files and dir’s back. If I just want to pull PDF’s back I can use this:

1	@files = Dir.glob("public/files/*.pdf")

That will show all PDF’s in that folder. You may also give it a file name and just pull one file out.

Anyway back to example one, I am looking for all files and all directories in the folder “files”. Below is the array I get back from @files.

for file in @files
 
puts file
 
end
#====
Output is:
 
public/files/test1.gif
public/files/test2.gif
public/files/folder

This is the best way I have found for pulling files from a directory and listing them in an array.

Need more help with rails? Here is a great book that i recommend for all new and old rails developers: Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional

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Listing files in a directory with Rails