php - Autoloading Classes in Plugins

In a custom WordPress plugin I have a folder /classes with about 20 classes. Classes sometimes change, come and go. I want all those classes from the folder to be loaded automatically.

No my idea was to load those files by a simple loop require:

foreach (scandir(dirname(__FILE__)."/classes/") as $filename) {
    $path = dirname(__FILE__) . '/' . $filename;
    if (is_file($path)) {
        require $path;
    }
}

However this does not work because there are subclasses loaded before superclasses and I get a fatal error.

PHP usually solves this problem with the spl_autoload_register() function.

However this seems not to work if used in multiple plugins. Has anybody found a good solution to this problem yet?

In a custom WordPress plugin I have a folder /classes with about 20 classes. Classes sometimes change, come and go. I want all those classes from the folder to be loaded automatically.

No my idea was to load those files by a simple loop require:

foreach (scandir(dirname(__FILE__)."/classes/") as $filename) {
    $path = dirname(__FILE__) . '/' . $filename;
    if (is_file($path)) {
        require $path;
    }
}

However this does not work because there are subclasses loaded before superclasses and I get a fatal error.

PHP usually solves this problem with the spl_autoload_register() function.

However this seems not to work if used in multiple plugins. Has anybody found a good solution to this problem yet?

• php
• plugin-development
• customization
• directory
• autoloading

Share Improve this question edited Nov 14, 2018 at 16:54 Blackbam asked Nov 14, 2018 at 16:46 BlackbamBlackbam 5751111 silver badges2828 bronze badges 2

• Have you considered using the composer autoloader? I have multiple plugins each with their own composer generated autoloaders, and they work just fine – Tom J Nowell ♦ Commented Nov 14, 2018 at 17:42
• Not yet thats a good idea. – Blackbam Commented Nov 14, 2018 at 17:56

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Composer Autoloader as suggested in the comments is the best way to do it. Just use composers classmap feature:

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