Can you help with a website development problem? (php, sql)

I’m developing a website as a part of my method to learn web development. It basically has a huge directory of all past exam papers for IGCSE stored on the server. On the website, there’ll be an options config on the left, where a user specifies filters, such as the paper number, year, and subject. These arguements are then passed, probably to a php script, to make the relevant files appear in a table on the right, with links to download them as a pdf, or view them in an online pdf viewer.

Now I have the whole bunch of files, but am wondering how to do the filtering? Should I put the file details into a MySQL database with links to the files, and then use SQL queries on the database? Or should I directly issue php filters on the files or something? I am in doubt, and would help some clarification.

Also, If i decide to go the MySQL way, is there some automated way to import the information into the table?
Basically each file is code-named like 0625_s09_02.pdf means the paper is of syllabus code 0625 (specifies the subject), from Summer 09, Paper 2…. There has gotta be some way to parse these names into a sql table right?