PHP 5 Power Programming

3.19. __autoload()

When writing object-oriented code, it is often customary to put each class in its own source file. The advantage of this is that it's much easier to find where a class is placed, and it also minimizes the amount of code that needs to be included because you only include exactly the classes you need. The downside is that you often have to include tons and tons of source files, which can be a pain, often leading to including too many files and a code-maintenance headache. __autoload() solves this problem by not requiring you to include classes you are about to use. If an __autoload() function is defined (only one such function can exist per application) and you access a class that hasn't been defined, it will be called with the ...