Generate Readable Byte Labels Using PHP

By  on  

Whenever you manage disk space, it's infinitely easier to read when when the bytes are displayed in KB, MB, GB... format. When reading files on the disk, the server returns the disk space in bytes so it's on us programmers to program file sizes for display. Using PHP, this task is cake.

function format_bytes($bytes)
{
    $labels = array('B','KB','MB','GB','TB');
    for($x = 0; $bytes >= 1024 && $x < (count($labels) - 1); $bytes /= 1024, $x++);
    return(round($bytes, 2).' '.$labels[$x]);
}

Users will appreciate this!

Recent Features

  • By
    How I Stopped WordPress Comment Spam

    I love almost every part of being a tech blogger:  learning, preaching, bantering, researching.  The one part about blogging that I absolutely loathe:  dealing with SPAM comments.  For the past two years, my blog has registered 8,000+ SPAM comments per day.  PER DAY.  Bloating my database...

  • By
    JavaScript Promise API

    While synchronous code is easier to follow and debug, async is generally better for performance and flexibility. Why "hold up the show" when you can trigger numerous requests at once and then handle them when each is ready?  Promises are becoming a big part of the JavaScript world...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    MooTools TextOverlap Plugin

    Developers everywhere seem to be looking for different ways to make use of JavaScript libraries. Some creations are extremely practical, others aren't. This one may be more on the "aren't" side but used correctly, my TextOverlap plugin could add another interesting design element...

  • By
    CSS Gradients

    With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements.  CSS gradients are another step in that direction.  Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

Discussion

  1. JP

    I always like using the right-shift operator for this kind of stuff. So instead of:

    $bytes /= 1024

    I would use:

    $bytes >>= 10

    Of course, you lost the digits after the decimal point (unless you get fancy), but on the plus side, it’s way faster than floating point division. The shift operators must be some of the loneliest operators in PHP, don’t you think?

  2. Nice one!
    I did a similar function … somewhat overkill, but a usefull thing over the years =)
    http://openminds.lucido-media.de/human-readable-bytes-sorry-php-net

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!