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Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 14:33:59 +0200
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Subject: __autoloading and functions
From: tslettebo@broadpark.no (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Terje_Sletteb=F8?=)

Hi all.

I don't know if this has been discussed before (I've not found it from doing
a search), but if it has, please provide me with a link to the discussion.

__autoload() is very convenient, but it has one problem: While classes
defined in the __autoload() function (via an include) are accessible
globally, any functions being included are not accessible outside the
__autoload() function, making them completely inaccessible to the rest of
the system. This means that if you have a file containing a class, as well
as one or more associated functions, you won't be able to use the functions,
if the file containing the class and functions is loaded using
autoloading...

I've not found a workaround for this (except reintroducing
include_once/require_once, which defeats the whole purpose of
autoloading...), are others also experiencing problems with this, and if
not, do you a) not use any functions, or b) manage some other way?

Has there been considerations for solving this in some way?

Example:

--- email_address.php ---

class EmailAddress
{
  public function __construct($address) { ... } // Check if string contains
a valid email address
....
  private $address;
}

function email_address($address)
{
  return new EmailAddress($address);
}

---------------------------------

You may then use this like:

$address=email_address(<some string expression>);

to make the conversion to EmailAddress less "obtrusive" (simulating implicit
conversion to user-defined type).

However, this doesn't work with autoloading, so you have to either manually
include the above file, or use "new" directly:

$address=new EmailAddress(<some string expression>);

In other words, this function is not a candidate for making it a method.

The problem in this particular example would go away if there was a way to
implicitly convert from fundamental types to user-defined types, but that's
another discussion...

Regards,

Terje