Good news for PHP 5.3 users with namespaced classes:
When you create a subfolder structure matching the namespaces of the containing classes, you will never even have to define an autoloader.
<?php
spl_autoload_extensions(".php"); spl_autoload_register();
?>
It is recommended to use only one extension for all classes. PHP (more exactly spl_autoload) does the rest for you and is even quicker than a semantically equal self-defined autoload function like this one:
<?php
function my_autoload ($pClassName) {
include(__DIR__ . "/" . $pClassName . ".php");
}
spl_autoload_register("my_autoload");
?>
I compared them with the following setting: There are 10 folders, each having 10 subfolders, each having 10 subfolders, each containing 10 classes.
To load and instantiate these 1000 classes (parameterless no-action constructor), the user-definded autoload function approach took 50ms longer in average than the spl_autoload function in a series of 10 command-line calls for each approach.
I made this benchmark to ensure that I don't recommend something that could be called "nice, but slow" later.
Best regards,
