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I seem to remember some autoloading functionality for classes in d7. Is there any documentation on this?

  • How should one organise the files containing the classes?
  • How can one make sure that parent-classes are loaded on instantiating a child-class?

I would like to avoid writing an autoloader for each module that has Classes.

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2 Answers 2

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Drupal 7 maintains a code registry and uses it for its classes autoloader. To populate this registry with your module's classes, you should add their files to the files[] entry in it's .info file:

files[] = includes/Foo.inc
files[] = includes/Bar.inc

PHP's class autoloading will make sure that the parent class file is also loaded.

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  • .php extension is supported too? E.g: MyClass.class.php? What is Drupal convention here?
    – Codium
    Commented Nov 7, 2015 at 0:38
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    File extension does not matter, you can also put several classes in a single files.
    – Pierre Buyle
    Commented Nov 9, 2015 at 1:53
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Yep, Pierre is correct.
Besides that, you can use xautoload module to abbreviate your info file with wildcards.
Doc page: http://drupal.org/node/1976198

Syntax:

files[] = includes/*.inc

And besides that, you can attempt to be forward-compatible with Drupal 8, and use PSR-0 for your modules. This is also supported by xautoload.

Namespace and class: \Drupal\my_module\OptionalSubNamespace\MyClass
File: (module dir)/lib/Drupal/my_module/OptionalSubNamespace/MyClass.php

Doing this will make the files[] stuff obsolete.

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  • If you use xautoload, then you can follow PSR-0 and starts using Drupal 8 class and namespace naming conventions and autoloader behavior.
    – Pierre Buyle
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 14:49
  • that's what i'm saying, isn't it :)
    – donquixote
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 15:07
  • is it possible to autoload a class found in a subfolder with xautoload? e.g. in my hook_entity_info, i added 'controller class' => 'Drupal\myentity\controller\MyEntityController' I have put my class in modules/myentity/lib/Drupal/controller/MyEntityController.php but I get an error the controller class could not be loaded.
    – yeahman
    Commented Mar 31, 2014 at 17:34
  • Hi yeahman, can you get on irc #drupal?
    – donquixote
    Commented Mar 31, 2014 at 17:34
  • @yeahman Fact is, I used the scenario you mention a dozen of times. I imagine you simply have a bug in your code.. we can examine on irc.
    – donquixote
    Commented Mar 31, 2014 at 17:40

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