Is there any way to redeclare a class safely in PH

Question

We all know the infamous "cannot redeclare class" error. Is there any method to overcome this and actually declare a new class with the same name, or is this impossible in PHP 5?

Answer 1

As Pekka and Techpriester both pointed out: no, you cannot. However, if you're using PHP >= 5.3, then you can use namespaces and the "use" construct to effectively "redeclare" the class. Here's an example:

// MyClass.php
class MyClass {
  const MY_CONST = 1;
}

// MyNamespaceMyClass.php
namespace Mynamespace;
class MyClass {
  const MY_CONST = 2;
}

// example.php
require_once 'MyClass.php';
require_once 'MyNamespaceMyClass.php';

use Mynamespace\MyClass as MyClass;

echo MyClass::MY_CONST; // outputs 2

Thus, you've got your desired result, as MyClass now refers to your namespaced class.