Composer Method
You dont need to necessarily register your own autoloader but use composer instead by adding an autoload section like so:
{
"autoload": {
"psr-4": {
"Enums\\": "enums/",
"Factories\\": "factories/",
"Objects\\": "objects/",
"Resources\\": "resources/"
}
},
"require": {
"programster/core-libs": "^2.1",
},
"config": {
"sort-packages": true,
"platform" : {
"php": "8.1.0",
"ext-yaml": "1"
}
}
}
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I need to investigate what this does performance wise.
Disadvantages
- Requires you to add namespace xxx to all your files that you wish to autoload.
- I was unable to figure out a way to have any classes autload from the root level. Hence, all files at this level had to either be manually included, or moved into a namespaced subfolder.
- Need to run composer dump-autoload
Simple Autoloader Package
There is a package to simplify autoloading for you. All you need to is include it, and pass the autoloader a list of directory paths that contain your classes that have a filename that matches their class name. E.g. MyClass.php for class MyClass;
composer require irap/autoloader:1.0 Copy to clipboard
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# include composer for the autoloading package.
require_once(__DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php);
# Specify the directories that contain your classes
# that you wish to autoload
$codeDirectories = [
__DIR__,
__DIR__ . "/enums",
__DIR__ . "/factories",
];
new Autoloader($codeDirectories);
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Advantages
- Don't need to use namespaces on your code files.
- Works with files being int the top/root level.
Disadvantages
- With large codebases, this might decrease performance, since the code will search through all the files across all the specified folders for the file with the appropriate name.
- Every time you add a new code folder you need to remember to add the path to your autoloader directories.