How to include a class in PHP

Question

I have file index.php, and I want to include file class.twitter.php inside it. How can I do this?

Hopefully, when I put the below code in index.php it will work.

$t = new twitter();
$t->username = 'user';
$t->password = 'password';

$data = $t->publicTimeline();

Solution 1

Your code should be something like

require_once('class.twitter.php');

$t = new twitter;
$t->username = 'user';
$t->password = 'password';

$data = $t->publicTimeline();

Solution 2

You can use either of the following:

include "class.twitter.php";

or

require "class.twitter.php";

Using require (or require_once if you want to ensure the class is only loaded once during execution) will cause a fatal error to be raised if the file doesn't exist, whereas include will only raise a warning. See http://php.net/require and http://php.net/include for more details

Solution 3

Include a class example with the use keyword from Command Line Interface:

PHP Namespaces don't work on the commandline unless you also include or require the php file. When the php file is sitting in the webspace where it is interpreted by the php daemon then you don't need the require line. All you need is the 'use' line.

1. Create a new directory /home/el/bin

2. Make a new file called namespace_example.php and put this code in there:

   <?php
       require '/home/el/bin/mylib.php';
       use foobarwhatever\dingdong\penguinclass;
   
       $mypenguin = new penguinclass();
       echo $mypenguin->msg();
   ?>
   

3. Make another file called mylib.php and put this code in there:

   <?php
   namespace foobarwhatever\dingdong;
   class penguinclass 
   {
       public function msg() {
           return "It's a beautiful day chris, come out and play! " . 
                  "NO!  *SLAM!*  taka taka taka taka."; 
       }   
   }
   ?>   
   

4. Run it from commandline like this:

   el@apollo:~/bin$ php namespace_example.php 
   

5. Which prints:

   It's a beautiful day chris, come out and play!
   NO!  *SLAM!*  taka taka taka taka
   

See notes on this in the comments here: http://php.net/manual/en/language.namespaces.importing.php

Solution 4

I suggest you also take a look at __autoload.
This will clean up the code of requires and includes.

Solution 5

1. require('/yourpath/yourphp.php');

   http://php.net/manual/en/function.require.php

2. require_once('/yourpath/yourphp.php');

   http://php.net/manual/en/function.require-once.php

3. include '/yourpath/yourphp.php';

   http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.include.php

4. use \Yourapp\Yourname

   http://php.net/manual/fa/language.namespaces.importing.php

Notes:

Avoid using require_once because it is slow: Why is require_once so bad to use?

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