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Message-ID: <200910171310.22916.larry@garfieldtech.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Autofunc patch (automatically loading functions like autoload)
From: larry@garfieldtech.com (Larry Garfield)

On Friday 16 October 2009 9:32:51 am Rack-Soft security wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am submitting quite an interesting patch to PHP 5.2.11 and PHP 5.3.0. It
> is used in production on hundreds of machines without any issues.
>
> Basically the patch adds the autofunc function that performs quite in the
> same way like autofunc, only that it does it for functions. As do you know,
> if PHP can not find a function it will issue a fatal error. With autofunc
> you can find the function somewhere and load it. Management of large no OOP
> projects (or mixed OOP/procedural) is much easier with this. I know that
> there are workarounds for loading functions, like adding them static to
> classes, but this is not efficient and involves important changes to code.
>
> I have attached some PHP files to test with, you must execute index.php
> that will load autofunc when the loaded functions can not be found.
>
> Let me know if you have any questions regarding the patch.
>
> Best regards,
> Bogdan

Looking at the sample code in autofunctest.tar.gz:

- Why are you using __autofunc()?  As far as I'm aware the recommendation for 
classes these days is to never use __autoload() but spl_autoload_register(), 
since you can then stack autoloaders rather than running the risk of a 
duplicate function name collision.  I would recommend skipping the magic 
function entirely and going straight to a stackable approach a la 
spl_autoload*().  To wit:

func_autoload_register('myloadfunction');
func_autoload_unregister('myoldloadfunction');
func_autoload_functions();
func_autoload_call();

See: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.spl.php

- I get the $VN_function global variable, as that's your lookup table.  
Naturally a production implementation would do something more robust, but it's 
good for example purposes here.  I do not, however, understand what's going on 
with $VN_global.  I just see an eval() and run in terror.  What's that all 
about?  Are you autoloading global variables too?  I don't understand.

- How would this handle namespaces?  Functions can have namespaces just like 
classes can, so autoloading functions should handle namespaces too, in much 
the same way as classes.

-- 
Larry Garfield
larry@garfieldtech.com