In this tutorial we will find out how to get a file from FTP that may changes.
The File Name depends from data
For example, you have a FTP, where each day you get actual import file and file name contains the current date.
To avoid importing the file manually each day, we can use patterns for the file name.
For example today is 30 August 2022 year, and today path to the file is /files/products-30-08-2022.csv
So tomorrow the file path will be /files/products-31-08-2022.csv
To avoid changing path for file each day, we can use such pattern: /files/products-{d-m-Y}.csv
Where d - current day, m - month and Y - year.
Also notice that app uses GMT timezone.
The full list of available characters you can find below:
format character | Description | Example returned values |
|---|---|---|
| Day | --- | --- |
d | Day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros | 01 to 31 |
D | A textual representation of a day, three letters | Mon through Sun |
j | Day of the month without leading zeros | 1 to 31 |
l (lowercase 'L') | A full textual representation of the day of the week | Sunday through Saturday |
N | ISO 8601 numeric representation of the day of the week | 1 (for Monday) through 7 (for Sunday) |
S | English ordinal suffix for the day of the month, 2 characters | st, nd, rd or th. Works well with j |
w | Numeric representation of the day of the week | 0 (for Sunday) through 6 (for Saturday) |
z | The day of the year (starting from 0) | 0 through 365 |
| Week | --- | --- |
W | ISO 8601 week number of year, weeks starting on Monday | Example: 42 (the 42nd week in the year) |
| Month | --- | --- |
F | A full textual representation of a month, such as January or March | January through December |
m | Numeric representation of a month, with leading zeros | 01 through 12 |
M | A short textual representation of a month, three letters | Jan through Dec |
n | Numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros | 1 through 12 |
t | Number of days in the given month | 28 through 31 |
| Year | --- | --- |
L | Whether it's a leap year | 1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise. |
o | ISO 8601 week-numbering year. This has the same value as Y, except that if the ISO week number (W) belongs to the previous or next year, that year is used instead. | Examples: 1999 or 2003 |
X | An expanded full numeric representation of a year, at least 4 digits, with - for years BCE, and + for years CE. | Examples: -0055, +0787, +1999, +10191 |
x | An expanded full numeric representation if requried, or a standard full numeral representation if possible (like Y). At least four digits. Years BCE are prefixed with a -. Years beyond (and including) 10000 are prefixed by a +. | Examples: -0055, 0787, 1999, +10191 |
Y | A full numeric representation of a year, at least 4 digits, with - for years BCE. | Examples: -0055, 0787, 1999, 2003, 10191 |
y | A two digit representation of a year | Examples: 99 or 03 |
| Time | --- | --- |
a | Lowercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem | am or pm |
A | Uppercase Ante meridiem and Post meridiem | AM or PM |
B | Swatch Internet time | 000 through 999 |
g | 12-hour format of an hour without leading zeros | 1 through 12 |
G | 24-hour format of an hour without leading zeros | 0 through 23 |
h | 12-hour format of an hour with leading zeros | 01 through 12 |
H | 24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros | 00 through 23 |
i | Minutes with leading zeros | 00 to 59 |
s | Seconds with leading zeros | 00 through 59 |
u | Microseconds. Note that date() will always generate 000000 since it takes an int parameter, whereas DateTime::format() does support microseconds if DateTime was created with microseconds. | Example: 654321 |
v | Milliseconds. Same note applies as for u. | Example: 654 |
| Timezone | --- | --- |
e | Timezone identifier | Examples: UTC, GMT, Atlantic/Azores |
I (capital i) | Whether or not the date is in daylight saving time | 1 if Daylight Saving Time, 0 otherwise. |
O | Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) without colon between hours and minutes | Example: +0200 |
P | Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) with colon between hours and minutes | Example: +02:00 |
p | The same as P, but returns Z instead of +00:00 (available as of PHP 8.0.0) | Example: +02:00 |
T | Timezone abbreviation, if known; otherwise the GMT offset. | Examples: EST, MDT, +05 |
Z | Timezone offset in seconds. The offset for timezones west of UTC is always negative, and for those east of UTC is always positive. | -43200 through 50400 |
| Full Date/Time | --- | --- |
c | ISO 8601 date | 2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00 |
r | » RFC 2822/» RFC 5322 formatted date | Example: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200 |
U | Seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT) | See also time() |
Unknown File Name
There may be cases when we cannot know the exact name of the file.
For example, we know that our file is located in the FTP folder /files/ and the file name is products-123.csv
And each day the numbers(123) after part of the file name products- may change.
In this case, we can use the pattern [*] - it means any value.
For our case, the path for a file with a pattern will be /files/products-[*].csv
It means that the app will search the file in the folder /files that have name starting products- and ends .csv
