Phalcon\Loader is an autoloader that implements PSR-4. Just like any autoloader, depending on its setup, it will try and find the files your code is looking for based on file, class, namespace etc. Since this component is written in C, it offers the lowest overhead when processing its setup, thus offering a performance boost.
This component relies on PHP’s autoloading classes capability. If a class defined in the code has not been included yet, a special handler will try to load it. Phalcon\Loader serves as the special handler for this operation. By loading classes on a need to load basis, the overall performance is increased since the only file reads that occur are for the files needed. This technique is called lazy initialization.
The component offers options for loading files based on their class, file name, directories on your file system as well as file extensions.
Registration : Usually we would use the spl_autoload_register() to register a custom autoloader for our application. Phalcon\Loader hides this complexity. After you define all your namespaces, classes, directories and files you will need to call the register() function, and the autoloader is ready to be used.
<?php
use Phalcon\Loader;
$loader = new Loader();
$loader->registerNamespaces(
[
'MyApp' => 'app/library',
'MyApp\Models' => 'app/models',
]
);
$loader->register();
register() uses spl_autoload_register() internally. As a result it accepts also accepts the boolean prepend parameter. If supplied and is true, the autoloader will be prepended on the autoload queue instead of appended (default behavior).
You can always call the isRegistered() method to check if your autoloader is registered or not.
