Autofunc patch (automatically loading functions like autoload)

Hi,

This is a good idea, it appears that it works fine ! I'm not really fond
of auto-loading (class or here functions) but it can be a good
thing ! :-)

Le vendredi 16 octobre 2009 à 17:32 +0300, Rack-Soft security a écrit :
[...]

Management of large no OOP projects (or mixed OOP/procedural) is much
easier with this.

Are there still new projects no OOP which are using PHP 5.x ?

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.

For people who are reading our message from archive, it must be better
the host these files on a web server. ;-)

For me, it is good. (the functionality, I didn't have the time to look
at the code)

Thanks for PHP.
Samuel.

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

Hi,

Unfortunately there may be a problem with this path and namespaces in 5.3. I tried to warn about this while namespaces were being implemented, but everyone was in the "autoload will always be for classes only".

Right now when you use fully qualified name of a class when inside a namespace, you need to always prefix it with backslash: \Foo.

For functions, it was deemed too hard as most internal functions remain in global space, so inside a namespace one would need to prefix every call with a backslash. If you don't prefix with backslash, the interpreter will try both options at runtime: if there's a local function, it'll run, if there isn't, it'll try to find it in global space, and only if it's not there, it'll fail.

The only reason this double lookup works is because there's no autoload for functions, and it's the reasons why classes don't have this feature. There was a big discussion back about how to enable them both without severe performance penalty or unintuitive behavior, but none was found.

I am myself a big proponent of autoload for functions, as there was never a good reason for excluding them from autoload (except for the artificially introduced one in 5.3).

Regards,
Stan Vassilev
----- Original Message -----
From: Rack-Soft security
To: internals@lists.php.net
Sent: Friday, October 16, 2009 5:32 PM
Subject: [PHP-DEV] Autofunc patch (automatically loading functions like autoload)

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