Optional namespaces with "use" keyword

Question

Starter: I was wondering if we could use "use" keyword as optional in our applications.

I am using Laravel 4 in my application. I have a controller and functions inside it. I direct specific routes to specific functions.

However, one function in this controller needs to use an outside class. I use "use" keyword like this:

use Payum\Request\CaptureRequest;
use Payum\AuthorizeNet\Aim\PaymentFactory;

This will work at the beginning of the controller, before Class opening. However, I was wondering if I could activate these use clauses only in this specific function which requires these kind of classes? I tried it, but it apparently threw an invalid syntax error.

I would be glad if I could have answer on this issue and theory behind this. I may even be asking a stupid question :) [Because I know I can reference to the functions in these classes by using full reference like Payum\Request\CaptureRequest\Function. Or I can just write this at the beginning of the Controller file as it would not give any loading problem to the execution.]

Example of what I want to achieve:

//use Payum\Request\CaptureRequest;
//use Payum\AuthorizeNet\Aim\PaymentFactory;
////// instead of using the reference here...

class MotawordController extends BaseController {

    function first()
    {
       ...
    }

    function second()
    {

        use Payum\Request\CaptureRequest;
        use Payum\AuthorizeNet\Aim\PaymentFactory;

        ...
    }

Possible duplicate of [What are namespaces?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3384204/what-are-namespaces) — Sunny Patel, Sep 18 '18 at 19:58

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 20 '13 at 17:55

No you can´t. From PHP manual:

The use keyword must be declared in the outermost scope of a file (the global scope) or inside namespace declarations. This is because the importing is done at compile time and not runtime, so it cannot be block scoped.

Optional namespaces with "use" keyword

1 Answers1