Most significant and revolutionary change found in PHP 5.3. is the inclusion of Namespaces especially designed for PHP application development. Most of the PHP developers familiar with Java and C# would also be familiar with namespaces. Those who are not aware of it can of course improve their knowledge on the same. One thing important to mention here is that PHP namespaces have massively changed the structure of PHP applications.
Why do we need PHP namespaces? We all are aware of PHP code libraries the bigger they become the more confusing it starts getting. In a code library each code is defined for a function, as the library expands there are chances of redefining the same code with a different function. The chances of redefining same code increases when adding a third party plug in. In small simple words namespaces help PHP developers avoid such situations by classifying the classes, constants and functions used in PHP application development into namespaces.
How it works? First all the classes, functions and constants are placed in one common place; from here they can be classified into namespaces using namespace keyword to name a file. It is generally the first thing to do before proceeding with PHP application development. Different namespaced codes can be defined in the same file but a PHP developer cannot use single namespace to define code block. Sub-namespaces can be used to define a chain of namespaces during PHP application development. Backslash () is used to part them.
Namespaces are used differently to ascertain different PHP terminology like fully qualified name, qualified name and unqualified name. Fully-qualified name is a PHP application development code with no ambiguity and are identified and separated using a backslash which works as a file path. Object initialization or one-off function calls can be made using fully-qualified name. Qualified name has atleast one namespace separator and unqualified name has no separator.
Naming in PHP application development needs to be done by following certain rules. Here we have some of them:
1) Calls to fully-qualified classes, constants and functions are unraveled at compile time.
2) Import rules are followed when converting qualified and unqualified names.
3) Ensure namespaces whether qualified or unqualified have recent namespace prepended if they are not already converted according to import rules.
4) For naming unqualified classes they are first translated as per the latest import rules and then replaced for short imported name.
5) All unqualified or qualified function calls in a namespace for PHP application development are resolved at run-time.
An empty string in the global space of PHP application development which also returns latest namespace name is called the __NAMESPACE__ Constant. It is very useful at the time of debugging and can also be used to vehemently generate fully-qualified class name. Explicit reference to an item in the recent namespace or sub namespace can be made using the namespace Keyword.
Latest namespace variation found in PHP is the auto-loading Namespace classes and help save lot of time. Here a PHP developer can create name for a namespaced class and the fully-qualified namespace and class name is passed to the __autoload function. Another option is to organize the series of class file in the same way as the namespace structure.
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