# Reply on "Who is using namespaces in PHP already?" - Thread: https://externals.io/message/40520 - Original archive: https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/40520 - Started by Karsten Dambekalns on 2008-09-15T14:26:35+00:00 - Messages: 8 - Reply by email to internals@lists.php.net - More for agents: search with https://externals.io/search.md?q={query} · JSON API at https://externals.io/api · documentation at https://externals.io/llms.txt --- ## #40520 — Karsten Dambekalns — 2008-09-15T14:26:35+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/40520#40520 Hi. Lukas asked on his Blog, so here goes my answer. We switched to namespaces last week for FLOW3 and all related packages. See http://forge.typo3.org/repositories/revision/21/1210 for the needed changes and http://forge.typo3.org/wiki/flow3-overview/Notes_on_using_PHP_namespaces for some notes on the implications. Currently we don't have any problems with use statements, as we still have fully qualified names almost everywhere, thus autoloading works as expected. Still, looking into the future I'd love to see an enhancement as proposed by Greg in http://marc.info/?l=php- internals&m=121527668606247 plus some way to get rid of having to use single classes if I could use some wildcard instead. Regards, Karsten -- Karsten Dambekalns Gimme Five! http://typo3.org/gimmefive --- ## #40524 — Vesselin Kenashkov — 2008-09-15T22:20:43+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/40520#40524 · In reply to: #40520 Hi, At our company the majority of the projects in the last 4 months are using namespaces (we can afford using dev version of php, because we host the projects). Just to add my +1 into the count. Vesselin Kenashkov On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 5:26 PM, Karsten Dambekalns wrote: > Hi. > > Lukas asked on his Blog, so here goes my answer. > > We switched to namespaces last week for FLOW3 and all related packages. See > http://forge.typo3.org/repositories/revision/21/1210 for the needed > changes and > http://forge.typo3.org/wiki/flow3-overview/Notes_on_using_PHP_namespaces for > some notes on the implications. > > Currently we don't have any problems with use statements, as we still have > fully qualified names almost everywhere, thus autoloading works as expected. > > Still, looking into the future I'd love to see an enhancement as proposed > by Greg in http://marc.info/?l=php-internals&m=121527668606247 plus some > way to get rid of having to use single classes if I could use some wildcard > instead. > > Regards, > Karsten > -- > Karsten Dambekalns > Gimme Five! > http://typo3.org/gimmefive --- ## #40525 — Jochem Maas — 2008-09-15T23:10:05+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/40520#40525 · In reply to: #40524 Vesselin Kenashkov schreef: > Hi, > > At our company the majority of the projects in the last 4 months are using > namespaces (we can afford using dev version of php, because we host the > projects). > Just to add my +1 into the count. care to elaborate? what are your experiences? have you run into any trouble? have you developed a list of do's and dont's? (as Karsten has) > > Vesselin Kenashkov > > On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 5:26 PM, Karsten Dambekalns wrote: > > > […] --- ## #40527 — Vesselin Kenashkov — 2008-09-16T08:44:05+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/40520#40527 · In reply to: #40525 We had no issues related to the namespaces (well we found & reported some minor bugs, but not related to the namespaces). Of course we have one namespace per file, having the file structure following the namespace structure. As well, as Karsten mentions, converting some_class_name_new to some::class::name::new is not an option. We had no issues with the name resolution and no confusion so far on how to use the namespaces. In fact, we have a complex autoload procedure that follows the directory/namespace hierarchy to load/create (yes we generate some) classes. No issues with the autoload so far. Just one note: you should not throw Exceptions during the all autoload process, not just the __autoload function. I haven't checked the releases in the last month so this might have changed. Besides the namespaces, our internal framework uses in it fundamentals the Late Static Binding (for creating singletons and providing the static method get_instance ). In overall I can say that php 5.3 is highly anticipated (both because of the namespaces and LSB). I'm reading the ongoing discussions and proposals for support for multiple namespaces per file but this I think will delay 5.3. My opinion is that php 5.3. has to be finally released even with limited support for namespaces. It can be followed immediately with another release with the extended namespace support (this way many users will switch to namespace support although some CMS/frameworks will not because for optimization reasons they combine files). 5.3 was delayed enough already... Vesselin Kenashkov > Vesselin Kenashkov schreef: > > > […] > > care to elaborate? what are your experiences? have you run into any > trouble? > have you developed a list of do's and dont's? (as Karsten has) > > > > > […] --- ## #40528 — Jochem Maas — 2008-09-16T10:12:05+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/40520#40528 · In reply to: #40527 Vesselin Kenashkov schreef: > We had no issues related to the namespaces (well we found & reported some > minor bugs, but not related to the namespaces). to be clear, your not using namespaced functions or constants? and your not using any classes that are not namespaced? how are you handling usage of internal classes? > Of course we have one namespace per file, having the file structure > following the namespace structure. As well, as Karsten mentions, converting > some_class_name_new to some::class::name::new is not an option. > We had no issues with the name resolution and no confusion so far on how to > use the namespaces. In fact, we have a complex autoload procedure that > follows the directory/namespace hierarchy to load/create (yes we generate > some) classes. No issues with the autoload so far. Just one note: you > should not throw Exceptions during the all autoload process, not just the > __autoload function. true, although you can actually successfully throw an exception from within autoload to the scope that triggered the autoload ... it's a bit of a WTF, there is also a workaround that uses eval to generate a class (when the class isn't found) that does nothing except throw exceptions upon init, static calls etc ... so that the code trying to use the non-existent class does actually get a class of the given name but using it *always* results in an exception (e.g. AutoLoadException or UnknownClassException) > I haven't checked the releases in the last month so > this might have changed. Besides the namespaces, our internal framework uses > in it fundamentals the Late Static Binding (for creating singletons and > providing the static method get_instance ). are you in a position to offer a few bits of example code to demostrate how/what your doing with respect to namespaces. I'm in the process of gathering material in order to compile a 'best practices' guide for namespaces ... I believe that there is a strong need to educate users in general on how/what/why to do things a certain way with namespaces (I include myself in that group of users!) ... maybe some of your implementation details could help educate others? > In overall I can say that php 5.3 is highly anticipated (both because of the > namespaces and LSB). I'm reading the ongoing discussions and proposals for > support for multiple namespaces per file but this I think will delay 5.3. My > opinion is that php 5.3. has to be finally released even with limited > support for namespaces. It can be followed immediately with another release > with the extended namespace support (this way many users will switch to > namespace support although some CMS/frameworks will not because for > optimization reasons they combine files). 5.3 was delayed enough already... your using alpha software in production, understandbly your hoping nothing changes and that it's released asap. but really your on the bleeding edge, some blood is to be expected. I don't actually think either LSB or namespaces is that highly anticipated in the larger arena, I think users like yourself and I are in a minority in that respect. I also think that uptake of these features will be modest at best, many developers/projects require that their code runs on older versions (even to the point of still supporting php4) which makes applying these new features impossible for them. > Vesselin Kenashkov > > > > > > […] --- ## #40529 — Vesselin Kenashkov — 2008-09-16T11:31:23+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/40520#40529 · In reply to: #40528 > Vesselin Kenashkov schreef: > > > […] > > to be clear, your not using namespaced functions or constants? > and your not using any classes that are not namespaced? > how are you handling usage of internal classes? No, in fact everything (classes, functions, constants) is namespaced (in order to avoid collisions if external code is used), except just a few initialization lines of code (which is outside any function/method). Then a few manually included namespaced classes, and then the autoload functionality gets on... > > > Of course we have one namespace per file, having the file structure > > […] > > true, although you can actually successfully throw an exception from > within autoload to the scope that triggered the autoload ... it's a bit of > a > WTF, there is also a workaround that uses eval to generate a class (when > the > class isn't found) that does nothing except throw exceptions upon init, > static calls > etc ... so that the code trying to use the non-existent class does actually > get > a class of the given name but using it *always* results in an exception > (e.g. > AutoLoadException or UnknownClassException) > > I haven't checked the releases in the last month so > > […] > > are you in a position to offer a few bits of example code to demostrate > how/what > your doing with respect to namespaces. I'm in the process of gathering > material > in order to compile a 'best practices' guide for namespaces ... I believe > that > there is a strong need to educate users in general on how/what/why to do > things > a certain way with namespaces (I include myself in that group of users!) > ... maybe > some of your implementation details could help educate others? see below for some examples... > > > In overall I can say that php 5.3 is highly anticipated (both because of > > […] > > your using alpha software in production, understandbly your hoping nothing > changes and that it's released asap. but really your on the bleeding edge, > some > blood is to be expected. Well, the expected price to pay for it :) The namespaces allow true modularity without endless class names like some_class_name_new or otherwise simulated namespaces. In fact our previous version of the framework was in desperate need for something like the LSB and that was the other major reason to switching to php 5.3. Consider this example: newInstanceArgs($args); } return self::$instances[$c]; } public function __clone() { throw new Exception('You can not clone a singleton.'); } public function whoami() { return static::$class; } } class singleton_test extends singleton { protected static $class = __CLASS__; } ?> We have to use LSB ($c = static::$class;) in the get_instant method, otherwise it will simply not work. Regargind the namespaces, the first thing that comes to my mind is that we have MVC framework and obviously I would like the name of the View to be the same as the name of the Controller. In our case the Actions are public methods and the request parameters are the arguments (we are using the Reflection to achieve this). Then for the Controller for example we have: And for the view: Obviously without namespaces we will have name collision. With namespaces we can have: And: We can extend this even more - with Packages: Then we can fit here the Model (if it has to have the same name...) Of course this example can be expanded furter with: namespace prefix::package::views::viewprocessor::media like: namespace prefix::package::views::xsl::screen namespace prefix::package::views::smarty::print For me this is extremely useful, because I can have classes with the same name for the views for all the different processors, media and avoiding the name collision with the controller. And organizing the file structure reflecting the namespaces like: /package/controllers /package/models /package/views/xsl/screen /package/views/smarty/print makes it easier to create an autoload function. Then in the controller you can simply type: $o = new prefix::package::models::model(); or $o = new prefix::package::models::model::get_instance(); (using a singleton) In the same time the models are in the same namespace/dir which gives you the possibility to reference the other model classes wihtout the namespace (and under definition of the MVC it self you will not need to reference the controller or the view classes so no need to use the "use" statement in the models). This is my story with the namespaces and the LSB. > > I don't actually think either LSB or namespaces is that highly anticipated > in the larger arena, I think users like yourself and I are in a minority > in that respect. I also think that uptake of these features will be modest > at best, many developers/projects require that their code runs on older > versions > (even to the point of still supporting php4) which makes applying these new > features impossible for them. As I said at least for me there is a huge advantage of using 5.3. As well I haven't checked the status of the rest of the changes like the overloading of static properties/calls but this could be another useful addition... Vesselin Kenashkov > > Vesselin Kenashkov > > […] --- ## #40530 — David Coallier — 2008-09-16T12:14:36+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/40520#40530 · In reply to: #40528 You'd probably have more replies about this on php-general. Good idea to put all the ideas together though :) -- Slan, David --- ## #40532 — Jochem Maas — 2008-09-16T12:54:58+00:00 URL: https://externals.io/message/40520#40532 · In reply to: #40530 David Coallier schreef: > You'd probably have more replies about this on php-general. Good idea > to put all the ideas together though :) yeah, you'd think that :-) I kind of live on php-generals, and I've already put out a request for feedback on namespace usage ... got a few replies too ... they all stated that they're not using them, haven't looked at them and probably won't be using them in the short/medium term due to BC. ain't life great :-D with regard to 'best practice'/guideline docs ... I've been thinking php needs them for a number of areas for a long while ... now I'm thinking heck *I* should do something about that :-) here's hoping greater minds are willing to review and correct mistakes I (will probably) make.