PHP autoloading with namespaces and built-in classes

Question

I'm using the following snippet to auto-load my php classes

spl_autoload_register(function ($path) {
    $path = strtolower(str_replace('\\', '/', $path));
    require_once "./$path.class.php";
});

now that i'm using my classes like this use Core\ClassA as ClassA; or use ABC\ClassBBC as ClassBBC it's working perfectly.

but when i want to create a new instance of the php built-in class mysqli i get the following warning:

Warning: require_once(./mysqli.class.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /var/www/html/projectA/autoloader.php on line 9

how can i enforce the auto-loader to load mysqli regardless of my auto-loader?

Using a namespace, are you instantiating mysqli as `new \mysqli()` ? — CD001, Aug 09 '16 at 09:18
Is mysqli enabled in your php.ini? Run `phpinfo();` and check to see if mysqli is present and enabled. — Tom Wright, Aug 09 '16 at 09:19
sure thing it's enabled, a lot of applications on the server are using it already. — Mumen Yassin, Aug 09 '16 at 09:20
nope, the other scripts are kinda old and they are not using any auto-loader. — Mumen Yassin, Aug 09 '16 at 09:22
I just tested the autoloader and it works as expected. Can we see the whole code? — Tom Wright, Aug 09 '16 at 09:30
The autoloader *only* fires if the requested class doesn't already exist - so as long as the class `\mysqli` exists (which it should) there shouldn't be an issue... there's something else going on here. — CD001, Aug 09 '16 at 10:04
Indeed. Are you sure the `mysqli` is installed? i.e. does it load if you remove your custom autoloader? — RandomSeed, Aug 09 '16 at 10:53

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:23

Several things here :

first off, you should check that file exists before requiring it, using file_exists
second, don't start your require by "./". You should only use absolute paths. You can learn why here : PHP - Failed to open stream : No such file or directory
third, there is no need for you to use require_once. Since autoloader is called, you can be sure that the file was not already included. And require_ once is slower than require.

In any case, the fact that your autoloader is being called for mysqli means that it was not found before, so this is strange. Since you mention that you are working with legacy code, maybe you need to reregister the default autoloader as well.

PHP autoloading with namespaces and built-in classes

1 Answers1