Question

I am using a lot of include files to include my 191 files of with the collection of functions, classes ect.

A problem for me is I really dislike editing the include files its gets a big mess and sometime i just forget to include something.

Therefore I was wondering, is there a include function for php or own made library that includes all the php files in a folder or even better in its own folder + all its sub-folders.

These things make life much easyer and flexible.

Answer 1

You can use the following function i just created:

function load_folder($folder, $ext = '.php') {
    foreach (glob("$folder*$ext") as $file) { 
        if (file_exists($file)) {
            require_once($file);
        }
    }
}

START EDIT

This is the new version of the same function. Now it allows you to specify folders as folder or folder/ without crashing. Also now it loads all files in all folders and subfolders.

function load_folder($dir, $ext = '.php') {
    if (substr($dir, -1) != '/') { $dir = "$dir/"; }
    if($dh = opendir($dir)) {
        $files = array();
        $inner_files = array();
        while($file = readdir($dh)) {
            if($file != "." and $file != ".." and $file[0] != '.') {
                if(is_dir($dir . $file)) {
                    $inner_files = load_folder($dir . $file);
                    if(is_array($inner_files)) $files = array_merge($files, $inner_files); 
                } else {
                    array_push($files, $dir . $file);
                }
            }
        }
        closedir($dh);
        foreach ($files as $file) {
            if (is_file($file) and file_exists($file)) {
                $lenght = strlen($ext);
                if (substr($file, -$lenght) == $ext) { require_once($file); }
            }
        } 
    }
}

END EDIT

You can also specify a specific extension if you want to load for example only .txt files in a folder you can execute is like this: load_folder('folder/', '.txt');.
Remember that someone think that this is somehow insecure. Before using this function inside a business site, look for more opinion about the topic.
Notice also that if some of your files are regarding classes you could use the __autoload() PHP native function to let PHP call the class where it is really needed (lazy loading).

References:

• Autoloading classes