Question

Obviously, autoloading classes with absolute namespaced names (\One\Two\Three) that translate to actual directory paths (One/Two/Three.php) is rather simple.

However, I am curious if there is any way to autoload classes who have been instantiated (for the first time in the PHP process) using a namespaced name relative to the current namespace (loading Two\Three from \One, for example).

As “__autoload” executes in the global namespace and only accepts one parameter (the class name, including namespace components) I cannot see how it could know where to look for the class.

However, I assume some PHP wizard has found a solution to this, seeing as it would be very inconvenient to always specify classes by their absolute namespaced name.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

You do always get the full namespace in your autoloader:

<?php
namespace {
    function __autoload($class)
    {
        var_dump($class);die();
    }
}

namespace One {
    new Two\Three();
}
?>

Output:

string(13) "One\Two\Three"