[javascript] How to load all the images from one of my folder into my web page, using Jquery/Javascript

I have a folder named "images" in the same directory as my .js file. I want to load all the images from "images" folder into my html page using Jquery/Javascript.

Since, names of images are not some successive integers, how am I supposed to load these images?

This is the way to add more file extentions, in the example given by Roy M J in the top of this page.

var fileextension = [".png", ".jpg"];
$(data).find("a:contains(" + (fileextension[0]) + "), a:contains(" + (fileextension[1]) + ")").each(function () { // here comes the rest of the function made by Roy M J   

In this example I have added more contains.

Add the following script:

<script type="text/javascript">

function mlString(f) {
    return f.toString().
        replace(/^[^\/]+\/\*!?/, '');
        replace(/\*\/[^\/]+$/, '');
}

function run_onload() {
    console.log("Sample text for console");
    var filenames = g_FOLDER_CONTENTS.match(/\S+/g);
    var fragment = document.createDocumentFragment();
    for (var i = 0; i < filenames.length; ++i) {
        var extension = filenames[i].substring(filenames[i].length-3);
        if (extension == "png" || extension == "jpg") {

var iDiv = document.createElement('div');
iDiv.id = 'images';
iDiv.className = 'item';
document.getElementById("image_div").appendChild(iDiv);
iDiv.appendChild(fragment);

            var image = document.createElement("img");
            image.className = "fancybox";
            image.src = "images/" + filenames[i];
            fragment.appendChild(image);
        }
    }
     document.getElementById("images").appendChild(fragment);

}

</script>

then create a js file with the following:

var g_FOLDER_CONTENTS = mlString(function() { /*! 
1.png
2.png
3.png 
*/}); 

Based on the answer of Roko C. Buljan, I have created this method which gets images from a folder and its subfolders . This might need some error handling but works fine for a simple folder structure.

var findImages = function(){
    var parentDir = "./Resource/materials/";

    var fileCrowler = function(data){
        var titlestr = $(data).filter('title').text();
        // "Directory listing for /Resource/materials/xxx"
        var thisDirectory = titlestr.slice(titlestr.indexOf('/'), titlestr.length)

        //List all image file names in the page
        $(data).find("a").attr("href", function (i, filename) {
            if( filename.match(/\.(jpe?g|png|gif)$/) ) { 
                var fileNameWOExtension = filename.slice(0, filename.lastIndexOf('.'))
                var img_html = "<img src='{0}' id='{1}' alt='{2}' width='75' height='75' hspace='2' vspace='2' onclick='onImageSelection(this);'>".format(thisDirectory + filename, fileNameWOExtension, fileNameWOExtension);
                $("#image_pane").append(img_html);
            }
            else{ 
                $.ajax({
                    url: thisDirectory + filename,
                    success: fileCrowler
                });
            }
        });}

        $.ajax({
        url: parentDir,
        success: fileCrowler
    });
}

If, as in my case, you would like to load the images from a local folder on your own machine, then there is a simple way to do it with a very short Windows batch file. This uses the ability to send the output of any command to a file using > (to overwrite a file) and >> (to append to a file).

Potentially, you could output a list of filenames to a plain text file like this:

dir /B > filenames.txt

However, reading in a text file requires more faffing around, so I output a javascript file instead, which can then be loaded in your to create a global variable with all the filenames in it.

echo var g_FOLDER_CONTENTS = mlString(function() { /*! > folder_contents.js
dir /B images >> folder_contents.js
echo */}); >> folder_contents.js

The reason for the weird function with comment inside notation is to get around the limitation on multi-line strings in Javascript. The output of the dir command cannot be formatted to write a correct string, so I found a workaround here.

function mlString(f) {
    return f.toString().
        replace(/^[^\/]+\/\*!?/, '').
        replace(/\*\/[^\/]+$/, '');
}

Add this in your main code before the generated javascript file is run, and then you will have a global variable called g_FOLDER_CONTENTS, which is a string containing the output from the dir command. This can then be tokenized and you'll have a list of filenames, with which you can do what you like.

var filenames = g_FOLDER_CONTENTS.match(/\S+/g);

Here's an example of it all put together: image_loader.zip

In the example, run.bat generates the Javascript file and opens index.html, so you needn't open index.html yourself.

NOTE: .bat is an executable type in Windows, so open them in a text editor before running if you are downloading from some random internet link like this one.

If you are running Linux or OSX, you can probably do something similar to the batch file and produce a correctly formatted javascript string without any of the mlString faff.

In jQuery you can use Ajax to call a server-side script. The server-side script will find all the files in the folder and return them to your html file where you will need to process the returned information.

Using Chrome, searching for the images files in links (as proposed previously) didn't work as it is generating something like:

(...) i18nTemplate.process(document, loadTimeData);
</script>
<script>start("current directory...")</script>
<script>addRow("..","..",1,"170 B","10/2/15, 8:32:45 PM");</script>
<script>addRow("fotos-interessantes-11.jpg","fotos-interessantes-> 11.jpg",false,"","");</script>

Maybe the most reliable way is to do something like this:

var folder = "img/";_x000D_
_x000D_
$.ajax({_x000D_
    url : folder,_x000D_
    success: function (data) {_x000D_
        var patt1 = /"([^"]*\.(jpe?g|png|gif))"/gi;     // extract "*.jpeg" or "*.jpg" or "*.png" or "*.gif"_x000D_
        var result = data.match(patt1);_x000D_
        result = result.map(function(el) { return el.replace(/"/g, ""); });     // remove double quotes (") surrounding filename+extension // TODO: do this at regex!_x000D_
_x000D_
        var uniqueNames = [];                               // this array will help to remove duplicate images_x000D_
        $.each(result, function(i, el){_x000D_
            var el_url_encoded = encodeURIComponent(el);    // avoid images with same name but converted to URL encoded_x000D_
            console.log("under analysis: " + el);_x000D_
            if($.inArray(el, uniqueNames) === -1  &&  $.inArray(el_url_encoded, uniqueNames) === -1){_x000D_
                console.log("adding " + el_url_encoded);_x000D_
                uniqueNames.push(el_url_encoded);_x000D_
                $("#slider").append( "<img src='" + el_url_encoded +"' alt=''>" );      // finaly add to HTML_x000D_
            } else{   console.log(el_url_encoded + " already in!"); }_x000D_
        });_x000D_
    },_x000D_
    error: function(xhr, textStatus, err) {_x000D_
       alert('Error: here we go...');_x000D_
       alert(textStatus);_x000D_
       alert(err);_x000D_
       alert("readyState: "+xhr.readyState+"\n xhrStatus: "+xhr.status);_x000D_
       alert("responseText: "+xhr.responseText);_x000D_
   }_x000D_
});

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

You can use the fs.readdir or fs.readdirSync methods to get the file names in the directory.

The difference between the two methods, is that the first one is asynchronous, so you have to provide a callback function that will be executed when the read process ends.

The second is synchronous, it will returns the file name array, but it will stop any further execution of your code until the read process ends.

After that you simply have to iterate through the names and using append function, add them to their appropriate locations. To check out how it works see HTML DOM and JS reference

Here is one way to do it. Involves doing a little PHP as well.

The PHP part:

$filenameArray = [];

$handle = opendir(dirname(realpath(__FILE__)).'/images/');
        while($file = readdir($handle)){
            if($file !== '.' && $file !== '..'){
                array_push($filenameArray, "images/$file");
            }
        }

echo json_encode($filenameArray);

The jQuery part:

$.ajax({
            url: "getImages.php",
            dataType: "json",
            success: function (data) {

                $.each(data, function(i,filename) {
                    $('#imageDiv').prepend('<img src="'+ filename +'"><br>');
                });
            }
        });

So basically you do a PHP file to return you the list of image filenames as JSON, grab that JSON using an ajax call, and prepend/append them to the html. You would probably want to filter the files u grab from the folder.

Had some help on the php part from 1

If interested in doing this without jQuery - here's a pure JS variant (from here) of the answer currently most upvoted:

var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();
xhr.open("GET", "/img", true);
xhr.responseType = 'document';
xhr.onload = () => {
  if (xhr.status === 200) {
    var elements = xhr.response.getElementsByTagName("a");
    for (x of elements) {
      if ( x.href.match(/\.(jpe?g|png|gif)$/) ) { 
          let img = document.createElement("img");
          img.src = x.href;
          document.body.appendChild(img);
      } 
    };
  } 
  else {
    alert('Request failed. Returned status of ' + xhr.status);
  }
}
xhr.send()

$(document).ready(function(){
  var dir = "test/"; // folder location
  var fileextension = ".jpg"; // image format
  var i = "1";

  $(function imageloop(){
    $("<img />").attr('src', dir + i + fileextension ).appendTo(".testing");
    if (i==13){
      alert('loaded');
    }
    else{
      i++;
      imageloop();
    };
  });   
});

For this script, I have named my image files in a folder as 1.jpg, 2.jpg, 3.jpg, ... to 13.jpg.

You can change directory and file names as you wish.

Works both localhost and on live server without issues, and allows you to extend the delimited list of allowed file-extensions:

var folder = "images/";

$.ajax({
    url : folder,
    success: function (data) {
        $(data).find("a").attr("href", function (i, val) {
            if( val.match(/\.(jpe?g|png|gif)$/) ) { 
                $("body").append( "<img src='"+ folder + val +"'>" );
            } 
        });
    }
});

NOTICE

Apache server has Option Indexes turned on by default - if you use another server like i.e. Express for Node you could use this NPM package for the above to work: https://github.com/expressjs/serve-index

If the files you want to get listed are in /images than inside your server.js you could add something like:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const path = require('path');

// Allow assets directory listings
const serveIndex = require('serve-index'); 
app.use('/images', serveIndex(path.join(__dirname, '/images')));

You can't do this automatically. Your JS can't see the files in the same directory as it.

Easiest is probably to give a list of those image names to your JavaScript.

Otherwise, you might be able to fetch a directory listing from the web server using JS and parse it to get the list of images.

Use :

var dir = "Src/themes/base/images/";
var fileextension = ".png";
$.ajax({
    //This will retrieve the contents of the folder if the folder is configured as 'browsable'
    url: dir,
    success: function (data) {
        //List all .png file names in the page
        $(data).find("a:contains(" + fileextension + ")").each(function () {
            var filename = this.href.replace(window.location.host, "").replace("http://", "");
            $("body").append("<img src='" + dir + filename + "'>");
        });
    }
});

If you have other extensions, you can make it an array and then go through that one by one using in_array().

P.s : The above source code is not tested.

This is the code that works for me, what I want is to list the images directly on my page so that you just have to put the directory where you can find the images for example -> dir = "images /" I do a substring var pathName = filename.substring (filename.lastIndexOf ('/') + 1); with which I make sure to just bring the name of the files listed and at the end I link my URL to publish it in the body

$ ("body"). append ($ ("<img src =" + dir + pathName + "> </ img>"));

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en" dir="ltr">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title></title>
    <script src="jquery-1.6.3.min.js"></script>
        <script>


        var dir = "imagenes/";
        var fileextension = ".jpg";
        $.ajax({
            //This will retrieve the contents of the folder if the folder is configured as 'browsable'
            url: dir,
            success: function (data) {
                //Lsit all png file names in the page
                $(data).find("a:contains(" + fileextension + ")").each(function () {
                    var filename = this.href.replace(window.location.pathname, "").replace("http://", "");
            var pathName = filename.substring(filename.lastIndexOf('/') + 1);               
                    $("body").append($("<img src=" + dir + pathName + "></img>"));
            console.log(dir+pathName);
                });
            }
        });



        </script>

  </head>
  <body>
<img src="1_1.jpg">
  </body>
</html>