__autoload mix up?

Question

I have a server with many customers on, when I develop I include my init.php in which I have an __autoloader() function that includes the file with dir_name(__FILE__)."/classes/".$className for instance.

But yesterday I saw that the server could not find the specific class, I restartat apache and then it worked again.

Every customer has this own init.php... ( and therefore many __autoloads on the same server )

customer1/init.php            : holds __autoload()
customer1/classes/class.php

customer2/init.php            : holds __autoload()
customer2/classes/class.php

I have not done some tests and I hope someone can answer my question before I try to reproduce the problem, but do you think it is possible for php to take the wrong autoload function when you get 2 or more requests at the same time?

Is spl_autoload_register the solution?

Many thanks for some ideas or brainstorming.

Answer 1

My guess is that you should have a typo in either one of your __autoload() functions or you are including the wrong init.php file.

Also, dir_name() does not exist, you should change that to dirname() instead or you can also use the new DIR constant for the same effect if you're using PHP >= 5.3.

EDIT: In light of your comment, use should use:

require(realpath(dirname(__FILE__)) . '/classes/' . $className);

or

require(realpath(__DIR__) . '/classes/' . $className);

Answer 2

Each PHP request is completely separate, in fact it is impossible for you to have two functions named __autoload() in the same PHP request, so they cannot interfere. Possible problems:

• You are including the wrong customer's init.php
• You forgot to include the init.php file, in which case there is no autoloading at all.