Lesson 25 - Namespaces in PHP

In the previous tutorial, ArrayAccess and cloning in PHP, we learned about the ArrayAccess interface, and learned how to clone objects. In today's lesson, we'll focus on namespaces, which are used mainly for organizing classes in large applications.

Namespaces

When working on larger applications, you'll definitely get to a point where you have a substantial amount of classes. Having 100 classes in one folder is, without a doubt, very confusing. One can't see what the application contains, which may lead to redundant code. In other words, we may end up writing an entirely new code rather than modifying an existing code. You should know without a doubt in your mind that this could only lead to trouble You may also run into what are known as name collisions, which are usually solved by giving the classes long names or confusing prefixes.

Having a large number of classes can be dealt with in several different ways. Fortunately, PHP supports namespaces since version 5.3, so you absolutely will need to use this sort of mechanism in this type of scenario.

Besides, almost all frameworks and third-party components use namespaces, so you should be familiar with them to be able to use third party libraries/projects.

A namespace is simply a

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