PHP 7 Programming Cookbook

Using namespaces

An aspect that is critical to advanced PHP development is the use of namespaces. The arbitrarily defined namespace becomes a prefix to the class name, thereby avoiding the problem of accidental class duplication, and allowing you extraordinary freedom of development. Another benefit to the use of a namespace, assuming it matches the directory structure, is that it facilitates autoloading, as discussed in Chapter 1, Building a Foundation.

How to do it...

1. To define a class within a namespace, simply add the keyword namespace at the top of the code file:

   namespace Application\Entity;

   Note

   Best practice

   As with the recommendation to have only one class per file, likewise you should have only one namespace per file.

2. The only PHP code that ...