Autoloader

Autoloader generator for PHP.

Why?

Autoloaders are cool, but every project comes with their own autoloader. Your project ends up having more autoloader than proper code.

I'm a pragmatic developer, and I don't believe that's fair that we spend in our production environment, where files barely changes comparing to the number of executions, executing autoloaders over and over.

So as a proof of concept I started this project, that aims to generate an efficient autoloader. The generated autoloader has an array of classes and files. As an extra gift, the generated code will have a generic PSR-0 autoloader (borrowed from @alganet).

The autoloader now generates also loads all the class dependencies (parent classes, interfaces) in order to reduce the number of calls to the autoloaders.

Some features

• No class to path transformation is done at run time. Autoloader creates a map of files and classes in a given directory.
• When a class is loaded, all its dependencies are loaded (parent classes, interfaces). The goal is to reduce the number of calls to the autloader.
• Always generate code that works with absolute paths (is --library is set, __DIR__ is being used instead)
• Includes (except with the --library) a generic PSR-0 autoloader.

How it works

It was designed to be integrated in your deployment scripts.

require "lib/Autoloader/loader.php";

$generator = new \Autoloader\Generator("vendors/");
$generator->generate("autoloader.php");

Or if you know what you're doing, you can use an instance of Finder.

require "lib/Autoloader/loader.php";
$finder = \Symfony\Component\Finder\Finder();
$finder->files()->name('*.php')->in("vendors/");

$generator = new \Autoloader\Generator($finder);
$generator->generate("autoloader.php");

How to install (for developers)

In order to install you should use composer.

php composer.phar install

Using with composer

Composer is a great dependency manager, however I believe there is a lot of room for optimization in terms of autoloader generation. If you wish to have a better autoloader, one that can scan all your dependencies and your project (Whether they have configure the psr-0 or not). It will also add your local clases to the autoloader.

{
  "require": {
    "crodas/autoloader":"*"
  },
  "minimum-stability": "dev",
  "scripts": {
    "post-autoload-dump": "Autoloader\\Composer::generate"
  }
}

By overriding the post-autoload-dump it will replace the generated autoloader file, it will be called automatically however if you want to re-run it (for instance when you add a new class in your project and wish to be autoloaded) just run composer dump-autoload.