John Davidson

Message:

how does PHP find a class when the class is defined in a sibling folder of the running .php file? The php file I am running is located in the ./examples folder. The class file is found in ./src/Fedex.

The use statement that ./examples/address-validation.php uses to set the path to a class

use FedEx\AddressValidationService\Request;

use FedEx\AddressValidationService\ComplexType;

use FedEx\AddressValidationService\SimpleType;



$addressValidationRequest = new ComplexType\AddressValidationRequest();

when I run the .php file I get this not found error:

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Class 'FedEx\AddressValidationService\ComplexType\AddressValidationRequest' 

not found in C:\xampp\htdocs\php-fedex-api-wrapper\examples\address-validation.php

The location of the class is in the ./src/FedEx/AddressValidationService folder. Where both the ./src and ./examples folders are in the same parent folder.

---

My Answer:
To resolve this issue, you can use PHP's autoloading feature to automatically load classes when they are needed.

You can create an autoloader function that will be responsible for loading classes based on their namespace and file path. Here's an example of how you can create an autoloader function:

php
spl_autoload_register(function($className) {
$namespace = 'FedEx\\AddressValidationService\\';
$baseDir = __DIR__ . '/../src/';

$className = str_replace($namespace, '', $className);
$className = str_replace('\\', '/', $className);

$filePath = $baseDir . $className . '.php';

if (file_exists($filePath)) {
require_once $filePath;
}
});


You can place this autoloader function at the beginning of your PHP file before you start using any classes. This function will automatically load the class file when it is needed based on the namespace and file path.

After adding the autoloader function, you should be able to use the class without any issues:

php
use FedEx\AddressValidationService\ComplexType;

$addressValidationRequest = new ComplexType\AddressValidationRequest();


This way, PHP will be able to find and load the class file from the correct folder, even if it is defined in a sibling folder.