I've been hoarding this thing for a while - it was a proof of concept which formed the basis of a personal inventory management app which I've lost interest in, but I kept it because it performs its purpose so well.
If you have a PHP enabled webserver or localhost, this script can scan a folder of LXF files and return some useful information, such as the thumbnail image, brick count, LDD version and brickset.
It's probably not suitable for reading several hundred files at once, but I hope it will be interesting and useful to novices and experts alike, perhaps even serving as a basis for your own projects.
See the thing here! (demo with some MOCs / official models, using a mix of internal and external image previews)
Get the thing here! (link updated: 2014-12-10)
CHANGELOG (full changelog is included with the readme, also viewable here)
20141210 @ 16:11
[bugfix] Added a check on the main gallery loop to supress a script error when no LXFs are found.
[bugfix] Completely removed the XML parsing "function" responsible for the "file_exists()" issue - the functionality is used only once per loop, and can be done in a single line anyway.