Consider whether a solution like this is really needed before implementing it.

Lastly, I think it would be a mistake to try to make PHP look like Java.

Firstly, it creates the illusion that there are some kind of packages in PHP, which is not the case, so the problem of name collisions remains. Howie have already pointed that out.

Secondly, declaring “imported” classes at the top of the file does not imply that those are the only dependencies required by the script. Some classes might already have loaded other classes too. It’s kind of a hint, though.

Personally, since there is no notion of a package in PHP (though in PHP 5.3 namespaces are introduced), i find there is no need to specify the exact location of the “imported class”. There is no way for explicitly declaring the dependencies either. So, basically the only things i want to (and can) achieve are:

1. Get rid of the require or include statements
2. Organize files in some kind of hierarchy

The idea is just to build the include_path to contain all the subdirectories. That way i can easily move files around without worrying about any class loading issues.

init();

function init() {
$path = implode(dirs(“classes”), PATH_SEPARATOR);
set_include_path($path);
main();
}

function dirs($path) {
$dirs = array($path);
$contents = scandir($path);
foreach ($contents as $filename) {
if (ignored($filename)) {
continue;
}
$item = “{$path}/{$filename}”;
if (is_dir($item)) {
$dirs = array_merge($dirs, dirs($item));
}
}
return $dirs;
}

function ignored($filename) {
return preg_match(“/^\./”, $filename);
}

function __autoload($class) {
require_once(“{$class}.php”);
}

The following is placed in classes/loader.inc.php and included via require_once(‘classes/loader.inc.php’);

It will turn this
new TagStorageData()
into
require_once(‘classes/tag/storage/tag_storage_data.class.php’);

and
new ITagStorageData()
into
require_once(‘classes/tag/storage/tag_storage_data.interface.php’);

define(‘CLASS_EXT’, ‘.class.php’);
define(‘INTERFACE_EXT’, ‘.interface.php’);

function __autoload ($className) {
loadClass($className);
}

function loadClass ($className) {
$classesRootFolder = dirname(__FILE__);
$classFileExtension = ”;
if(preg_match(‘/^I[A-Z]/’, $className)) { // Interface
$classFileExtension = INTERFACE_EXT;
$className = preg_replace(‘/^I([A-Z])/’, ‘$1′, $className);
} else { // Class
$classFileExtension = CLASS_EXT;
}
$parts = preg_split(‘/(?<!^)(?=[A-Z])/', $className);
$classFileName = strtolower(implode('_', $parts).$classFileExtension);
array_pop($parts); // Drop final element
$classFileName = strtolower(implode('/', $parts)).'/'.$classFileName;
echo "Auto-loading Class: $className in $classFileName\n";
$classFileName = $classesRootFolder.'/'.$classFileName;
include_once($classFileName);
}

A few example licenses:

MIT License allows for most use but you must include the copyright notice every time: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php

Public domain has no restrictions at all: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/

Anyway, thanks a lot!

if (preg_match(’/^[A-Z](.*).php$/’, $file,$class)) {
$imports[$class[1]] = “$folder/$file”;
}

thanks again.

for that thing of “*” you could use some regular expressions instead of strrpos to make it more restrictive with the uppercase convention and the “.php” ending extension, something like this:

if (preg_match(‘/^[A-Z](?.*).php$/’, $file,$class)) {
$imports[$class['name']] = “$folder/$file”;
}