PHP: atomatic include

Question

I am using a lot of include files to include my 191 files of with the collection of functions, classes ect.

A problem for me is I really dislike editing the include files its gets a big mess and sometime i just forget to include something.

Therefore I was wondering, is there a include function for php or own made library that includes all the php files in a folder or even better in its own folder + all its sub-folders.

These things make life much easyer and flexible.

Answer 1

You could just have a 'meta-include' file which has the individual include statements, and then you only include that one single file in your scripts.

Of course, the auto-loading versions in the other answers here would be more efficient. While PHP's pretty fast at loading/parsing, 191 individual files to load for every request would add up pretty quick.

Answer 2

I usually require as first application_top.php with this:

...

function requireAll($folder){
    // open the folder
    $libs = opendir($folder);
    // loop inside to include each file, excluding windows default 'meta-link' . and ..
    while ($lib = readdir($libs)) {
        if ($lib != "." && $lib != "..")
            // require_once to be sure to require only one time
            require_once $folder . $lib;
}
    // close the dir for cleaning stuff
closedir($libs);
}

//Require all helpers   
requireAll(DIR_HELPERS);

//Require all model classes 
requireAll(DIR_MODEL);

//Require all mappers   
requireAll(DIR_MAPPERS);

...

Answer 3

If you have a standard between the Class Names and the files you can use the __autoload() function. It will save you a lot of includes.

http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.autoload.php

Answer 4

You can use the following function i just created:

function load_folder($folder, $ext = '.php') {
    foreach (glob("$folder*$ext") as $file) { 
        if (file_exists($file)) {
            require_once($file);
        }
    }
}

START EDIT

This is the new version of the same function. Now it allows you to specify folders as folder or folder/ without crashing. Also now it loads all files in all folders and subfolders.

function load_folder($dir, $ext = '.php') {
    if (substr($dir, -1) != '/') { $dir = "$dir/"; }
    if($dh = opendir($dir)) {
        $files = array();
        $inner_files = array();
        while($file = readdir($dh)) {
            if($file != "." and $file != ".." and $file[0] != '.') {
                if(is_dir($dir . $file)) {
                    $inner_files = load_folder($dir . $file);
                    if(is_array($inner_files)) $files = array_merge($files, $inner_files); 
                } else {
                    array_push($files, $dir . $file);
                }
            }
        }
        closedir($dh);
        foreach ($files as $file) {
            if (is_file($file) and file_exists($file)) {
                $lenght = strlen($ext);
                if (substr($file, -$lenght) == $ext) { require_once($file); }
            }
        } 
    }
}

END EDIT

You can also specify a specific extension if you want to load for example only .txt files in a folder you can execute is like this: load_folder('folder/', '.txt');. Remember that someone think that this is somehow insecure. Before using this function inside a business site, look for more opinion about the topic. Notice also that if some of your files are regarding classes you could use the __autoload() PHP native function to let PHP call the class where it is really needed (lazy loading).

References:

• Autoloading classes