Meet Composer, your new autoloader

Most PHP developers are familiar with Composer’s power as a package manager, and it’s ability to autoload all the packages it downloads. But what fewer PHP developers know about or use is Composer’s ability to load your code automatically, too.

In fact, developers can use Composer’s autoloader to autoload their own code, even if they don’t use one of the PSR standards for namespacing and path construction.

Using Composer with PSR-0 or PSR-4 for your own code

If you already apply either PSR-0 or PSR-4 to your own code, you can make use of Composer with relative ease. If you’re using PSR-0, you only have to give Composer the path and the namespace, like this:

    "autoload": {
        "psr-0" : {
            "Application": "src/"
        }
    }

The key tells Composer that all Application\ namespaced code iwll live in the src/ directory; PSR-0 expects that there will be an Application/ directory inside the src/ directory to contain all the code, too.

For developers who have upgraded to PSR-4, it’s as simple as making two small changes: switching the psr-0 to psr-4, and identifying the fully qualified namespace for the directory:

    "autoload": {
        "psr-4" : {
            "Application\\": "src/"
        }
    }

Using Composer for non-PSR-compliant applications

Legacy code often doesn’t follow the current PSR standards, and developers may find it impractical to switch. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t use Composer to autoload your code. In fact, with classmaps you can.

A classmap is a Composer feature that iterates through a directory and pulls the classes out of the files in that directory, and adds them to a classmap. Even though the application I’m using as an example implements PSR-0, we can still generate a classmap:

    "autoload": {
        "classmap" : [
            "src/"
        ]
    }

This produces a classmap that looks something like this:

<?php

// autoload_classmap.php @generated by Composer

$vendorDir = dirname(dirname(__FILE__));
$baseDir = dirname($vendorDir);

return array(
    'Application\\Controller\\Dashboard' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Controller/Dashboard.php',
    'Application\\Controller\\Defaults' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Controller/Defaults.php',
    'Application\\Controller\\Entry' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Controller/Entry.php',
    'Application\\Controller\\Logbook' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Controller/Logbook.php',
    'Application\\Controller\\RequiresAuth' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Controller/RequiresAuth.php',
    'Application\\Controller\\User' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Controller/User.php',
    'Application\\Model\\LogEntry\\Defaults' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Model/LogEntry/Defaults.php',
    'Application\\Model\\LogEntry\\Gateway' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Model/LogEntry/Gateway.php',
    'Application\\Model\\LogEntry\\HourReports' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Model/LogEntry/HourReports.php',
    'Application\\Model\\LogEntry\\LogEntry' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Model/LogEntry/LogEntry.php',
    'Application\\Model\\LogEntry\\LogEntryCollection' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Model/LogEntry/LogEntryCollection.php',
    'Application\\Model\\LogEntry\\Storage' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Model/LogEntry/Storage.php',
    'Application\\Model\\User\\Gateway' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Model/User/Gateway.php',
    'Application\\Model\\User\\Storage' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Model/User/Storage.php',
    'Application\\Model\\User\\User' => $baseDir . '/src/Application/Model/User/User.php',
    / ...
);

This has some definite advantages for projects that are still stuck in legacy mode: the ability to autoload classes automatically, without rewriting massive amounts of the application. Though there is also a significant drawback: unlike PSR-0 or PSR-4, the classmap has to be updated every time a file is renamed or a new class is added. This can be avoided by using the classmap only for legacy classes, and writing new classes to be compatible with a PSR standard.

The bottom line

You don’t have to maintain your own autoloader or rely on outdated technology to keep autoloading your files. Composer offers a great number of options built into a tool you’re probably already using anyway. Give it a shot!

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