The File Info Extension

Fileinfo is a PHP script that you can use from your Ajax application to get essential informations about a file on the server or any website:
- The date.
- The size.
- The type.

The XMLHttpRequest object has a similar function, getResponseHeader but it depends upon the configuration of the server and often doesn't return what you expect from it.

How it works

The PHP script currently holds a single function, fileinfo, with an argument: the name of a file or a URL.
The function makes use of some PHP functions (compatible with version 4 and 5) to get the infos:
- filemtime() to get the date, and date() to format it;
- filesize() for the size of the file;
- filetype that returns these strings: file, dir, link, unknow, etc.
These infos are packed into an array with these keys in order: date, size, type et this array is returned by the function.
To use the function, call it with a such code:

include_once("fileinfo.php");
$x = fileinfo("someurl.html");
print_r($x);

But at the same type, these infos are stored into a file in the current directory, fileinfo.txt, each info on a line.
You can make a POST request to call the PHP script, with the filename as parameter, followed by a GET request to retrieve the fileinfo.txt file.

Exemple of fileinfo.txt

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:37:18 GMT
1575
file

View this text file.
View the PHP extension (renamed fileinfo-php.txt).

Demos

Try the demo.
This demo uses a PHP web page with all the scripts embedded into it.

Ajax version.
This demo makes use of the Anaa framework in a first step to execute the PHP script with a POST command, and then to retrieve the results with a GET command.