Catch requests to non-existent classes (not autoload)

Question

Is there a manner in which to catch requests to a class which does not exist.

I'm looking for something exactly like __call() and __static(), but for classes as opposed to methods in a class.

I am not talking about autoloading. I need to be able to interrupt the request and reroute it.

Ideas?

Answer 1

I am not aware of any way of intercepting

$variable = new Classname();

without extremely resource-draining things like Reflection or parsing the script files before executing them.

As far as I can see, autoloading is the closest you'll get here.

If you need to do this, you may have to build a custom factory function

$variable = newClass("Classname", $arg1, $arg2, $arg3);

and do your intercepting there.

Answer 2

I am not talking about autoloading. I need to be able to interrupt the request and reroute it.

Ideas?

I'm not convinced autoload can't do what you need. If a request comes in for an undefined class, autoload can load the appropriate class file which would contain a class that has a combination of reflection and _call/_get, etc... and be able to process the request.