How to use spl_autoload() instead of __autoload()
autoload, deprecated, php, spl-autoloader
Solution
You need to register autoload functions with `spl_autoload_register`. You need to provide a "callable". The nicest way of doing this, from 5.3 onwards, is with an anonymous function:
spl_autoload_register(function($class) {
include 'classes/' . $class . '.class.php';
});
The principal advantage of this against `__autoload` is of course that you can call `spl_autoload_register` multiple times, whereas `__autoload` (like any function) can only be defined once. If you have modular code, this would be a significant drawback.
2018 update to this: there shouldn't really be that many occasions when you need to roll your own autoloader. There is a widely accepted standard (called PSR-4) and several conforming implementations. The obvious way of doing this is using Composer.
Problem
According to http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.autoload.php the magic function `__autoload()` was deprecated as of PHP 7.2.0 and removed as of PHP 8.0.0. The official alternative is `spl_autoload()`. See http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.spl-autoload.php. But the PHP manual does not explain the proper use of this baby. My question: How to replace this (my automatic class autoloader) with a version with `spl_autoload()`? ``` function __autoload($class) { include 'classes/' . $class . '.class.php'; } ``` Problem: I cannot figure out how to give that function a path (it only accepts namespaces). By the way, there are a lot of threads regarding this topic here on SO, but none gives a clean & simple solution that replaces my sexy one-liner.