Modernizing Legacy Applications in PHP

Chapter 3. Implement an Autoloader

In this step, we will set up automatic class loading. After this, when we need a class file, we will not need an include or require statement to load it for us. You should review the PHP documentation on autoloaders before continuing – http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.autoload.php.

PSR-0

There are many different autoloader recommendations in PHP land. The one we will be using to modernize our legacy application is based on something called PSR-0.

PSR-0 is a PHP Framework Interoperability Group recommendation for structuring your class files. The recommendation rises out of a long history of projects using the "class-to-file" naming convention from the days of PHP 4. Originating with Horde and PEAR, the ...