Auto-populate a list with the filenames within a folder

In this article we will provide an example script so that you can generate the items of a dropdown type field with the file names from a folder of your choice.

First we will need to add a regular dropdown field to your form, then in the Items attribute add the following code snippet:

//<code>

// This shouldn't be needed in Joomla 3.x, but better safe than sorry!
jimport('joomla.filesystem.folder');

// Initialize our empty array that will hold the values.
$items = array();

// If you want to show a "Please select" item ([c] means that the value is selected by default), uncomment the following line:
// $items[] = "|Please select[c]";

// Grab all the files from your selected folder. Joomla\CMS\Filesystem\Folder::files() is a Joomla! framework function.
$files = Joomla\CMS\Filesystem\Folder::files(JPATH_SITE.'/path/to/folder');

// You can use paths relative to your Joomla! root, which is stored in the constant JPATH_SITE:
// $files = Joomla\CMS\Filesystem\Folder::files(JPATH_SITE.'/language/en-GB');
// The above grabs all frontend language files from the en-GB folder.

// Now, let's merge the two arrays (our initial array + the list of files)
$items = array_merge($items, $files);

// The list of files should be returned each on a new line,
// so we convert this array into a string and we separate values by a new line (\n).
return implode("\n", $items);

//</code>

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