Re: Autofunc patch (automatically loading functions like autoload)

On Friday 16 October 2009 9:32:51 am Rack-Soft security wrote: > Hello, > > I am submitting quite an interesting patch to PHP 5.2.11 and PHP 5.3.0. It > is used in production on hundreds of machines without any issues. > > Basically the patch adds the autofunc function that performs quite in the > same way like autofunc, only that it does it for functions. As do you know, > if PHP can not find a function it will issue a fatal error. With autofunc > you can find the function somewhere and load it. Management of large no OOP > projects (or mixed OOP/procedural) is much easier with this. I know that > there are workarounds for loading functions, like adding them static to > classes, but this is not efficient and involves important changes to code. > > I have attached some PHP files to test with, you must execute index.php > that will load autofunc when the loaded functions can not be found. > > Let me know if you have any questions regarding the patch. > > Best regards, > Bogdan Looking at the sample code in autofunctest.tar.gz: - Why are you using __autofunc()? As far as I'm aware the recommendation for classes these days is to never use __autoload() but spl_autoload_register(), since you can then stack autoloaders rather than running the risk of a duplicate function name collision. I would recommend skipping the magic function entirely and going straight to a stackable approach a la spl_autoload*(). To wit: func_autoload_register('myloadfunction'); func_autoload_unregister('myoldloadfunction'); func_autoload_functions(); func_autoload_call(); See: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.spl.php - I get the $VN_function global variable, as that's your lookup table. Naturally a production implementation would do something more robust, but it's good for example purposes here. I do not, however, understand what's going on with $VN_global. I just see an eval() and run in terror. What's that all about? Are you autoloading global variables too? I don't understand. - How would this handle namespaces? Functions can have namespaces just like classes can, so autoloading functions should handle namespaces too, in much the same way as classes. -- Larry Garfield larry@garfieldtech.com