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Date: Tue, 13 May 2008 14:50:44 -0700
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] 5.3 and reflection
From: jeremy@pinacol.com (Jeremy)

Stanislav Malyshev wrote:
> Hi!
> 
>> I'm installing a recent snap of 5.3 on my dev server.  The app I'm 
>> working on makes heavy use of reflection.  How has reflection changed 
>> in 5.3 to address namespaces?  What resolution rules apply when 
>> creating a 
> 
> Namespaces should not have big influence on reflection, since namespace 
> is just the logical partitioning of the class name - i.e. if the class 
> name is Foo::Bar::Baz, you can say that Foo::Bar is the namespace, but 
> for reflection you still use full class name.
> 
>> ReflectionClass?  If I try to create a ReflectionClass for a class 
>> that is outside the current namespace, what will happen?
> 
> You should be able to use any class name with ReflectionClass. Since 
> namespaces are compile-time only, at runtime there's no such thing as 
> "current namespace".
> 

Thanks for your response.  Just to clarify,

- Class names are translated at compile time to include the namespace. 
This composite is now considered to be the class name by the engine, and 
the class name alone (i.e. "Baz") is no longer meaningful.

- Therefore, to reflect a class at runtime, the namespace must be included.

To continue your example, if I tried to do this:

$reflect = new ReflectionClass("Baz");

it would not work, regardless of the namespace of the file that 
statement appears in.  I must instead do this:

$reflect = new ReflectionClass("Foo::Bar::Baz");

Furthermore, there will never be a way to reflect a namespace, since the 
concept of namespacing is essentially lost by the time the reflection 
code would be executed.

Is this accurate?

Thanks,
Jeremy