joefallon/phpautoloader

Joe's simple to use and versatile PHP autoloader.

phpautoloader

By Joe Fallon, _(*1)

Joe's PHP Autoloader is a versatile and easy to use autoloader for PHP 5.3 and greater. It provides the following features:, _(*2)

• When auto-loading a class, all of the include paths are searched automatically.
• For maximum legacy support, non-namespaced classes are allowed.
• Normal PSR-0 namespaced classes are supported.
• Underscore namespaced (e.g. like the Zend Framework 1 or PEAR) classes are supported.
• This autoloader is fast. No recursive directory searches are performed.

Requirements

The only requirement is PHP > 5.3.0. This is due to the use of namespaces. Additionally, Composer can be helpful., _(*3)

Installation

The easiest way to install Joe's Autoloader is with Composer. Create the following composer.json file and run the php composer.phar install command to install it., _(*4)

{
    "require": {
        "joefallon/phpautoloader": "*"
    }
}

Usage

To use Joe's Autoloader, the following initialization steps are needed:, _(*5)

• Add the base directories where classes can be found to the include path.
• Call the Autoloader::registerAutoload() method to load the autoloader.
• Start using classes in your code.

use JoeFallon\AutoLoader;

// Define the include paths.
define('BASE_PATH', realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../'));
define('LIB_PATH',  BASE_PATH . '/lib');
define('VEND_PATH', BASE_PATH . '/vendor');

// Set the application include paths for auto-loading.
set_include_path(get_include_path() . ':' . LIB_PATH . ':' . BASE_PATH);

// Require the Composer autoloader. Composer will handle its own class auto-loading
// using its own autoloader.
require(VEND_PATH . '/autoload.php');

// Initialize Joe's Autoloader. Joe's Autoloader will handle auto-loading any classes
// that are not auto-loaded using Composer's built-in autoloader.
Autoloader::registerAutoLoad();

As long as namespaces are mapped to the folder structure within the directories defined above, then autoloader will have no problems finding and loading the classes., _(*6)

For example, let's assume we want to load the class Bar that is within the file named Bar.php contained within a folder Foo. Also, let's assume that the class Bar is namespaced \Foo\Bar. This would give a file path of LIB_PATH/Foo/Bar.php. When new Bar(); is executed, the Bar class will be loaded (if is was not already)., _(*7)

Here is a visual depiction of the above example:, _(*8)

, _(*9)