Adding It All Up - PHP

You can also add files to a previously-created archive with the add() method, which accepts a list of files and merely adds them to the specified archive file. If the file does not already exist, add() will create it for you.

The following example illustrates, by adding some files to the "data.tar" file created in the previous example:

<?php

// include class

require("Tar.php");
if (file_exists("data.tar"))

{

// create Archive_Tar() object

// specify filename for output file

$tar = new Archive_Tar("data.tar");
 // add files to existing archive

$tar->add(array("employees.xml", "departments.xml")) 
or die ("Could not add files!"); } else {

die("File does not exist!");

}
?>

It's important to note that the add() method will add files to the archive even if they already exist. This behaviour can lead to problems in certain situations - for example, if you ran the script above four times, the resulting archive would hold four copies of each of the files in the file list.

The ability to selectively add files to an archive comes in handy when you need to iterate over a file collection and only archive those which meet certain criteria - for example, all those files older than a specific date. Consider the following example, which illustrates how you might do this:

<?php

// include class

require("Tar.php");
// get UNIX timestamp for 1 Jun 2003 

$ts = mktime(0, 0, 0, 6, 1, 2003);
// set directory

$dir = "scripts/";
// create tar file

$tar = new Archive_Tar("data.tar");
// iterate over files in directory

$handle = opendir("scripts/");

while (false !== ($file = readdir($handle)))

{

if ($file != "." && $file != ".." && filemtime($dir 
. "/" . $file) < $ts) 

{

// if file was modified before $ts

// add to archive

$tar->add($dir . "/" . $file) or die ("Could not add file!");

}

}

closedir($handle);
?>

In this case, the filemtime() function has been used to obtain the last modification time of each file in the named directory. Files with a timestamp older than the specified date get add()-ed to the archive as they are encountered.