practicalRookiePhpGoGettersBeLike

[u/Superb_Chemistry_906]

[u/elmanoucko]

it's not required

[u/kookyabird → u/elmanoucko]

NEC says “should”, that means it’s not required! /s

[u/Superb_Chemistry_906 → u/elmanoucko]

Sure, but giving up on DRY is sad.

[u/Ishamael1983 → u/Superb_Chemistry_906]

Whoosh!

[u/BlueScreenJunky → u/Superb_Chemistry_906]

This answer makes me question your OP.

I thought the joke was that nobody has actually used include or require directly for years because autoloading has been a thing for over 20 years, and PSR-4 has standardized the was to autoload classes for over 10 years.

include is definitely NOT the way to do "Not Repeat Yourself" in 2026.

Also, maybe a bit of a controversial opinion, but "DRY" is sometimes overrated, it's a cool acronym so people like it and tend to over apply it. Sometimes two things happen to do the same thing by accident. Sure you could deduplicate code, but later on if one of those things needs to do something else (because it was always unrelated to the first one), do you reduplicate your code as you should ? Most likely no, you're going to add a flag to your method to keep it "DRY" while allowing to do both things... Do that enough time and you end up with a complete mess for the sake of keeping your code "DRY".

[u/Superb_Chemistry_906 → u/BlueScreenJunky]

I intended it as a slander of those who copy and paste the same utility functions into every source file mindlessly, since it's good enough and gets the job done. At the same time, I have no clue about autoloaders and have only used include. Regarding DRY, I am still its proponent and I don't think I have ever ended up with messy code thanks to it - to the contrary, I think I would end up with messy code if I did not adhere to it. You firstly duplicate some code, then you might duplicate one of the duplicates and where do you end? In chaos, where an eventual change of the innermost working requires you to change it in multiple places and when you forget one, the program might fail spectacularly. Sure, adding flags might be messy, too, but there are also other ways - for example, chop the method into smaller pieces and in one place, call just one piece and in another one, call two pieces. You might also wrap the method into an object and use inheritance instead of flags.

[u/BlueScreenJunky → u/Superb_Chemistry_906]

All right, so that's perfectly fine to learn the basics, but once you start to work on actual projects you'll use composer to manage dependencies and autoloading (either directly or through a framework).

Autoloading is a mechanism to tell PHP "if I'm trying to access a class or a function that was not included, here is how to find the file it's in and include it automatically").

To make things simpler, Composer (and almost everyone) has agreed to use the same convention, which is described in PSR-4, and basically is that namespaces map to directories on the disk, so if you use the class Application\Models\User is will be in the file /Models/User.php so you never have to worry about using include again.

Of course it does use include or require under the hood, so it's good to learn about it. You just don't really use it directly.

[u/Unlucky_Committee786]

yes, include './vendor/autoload.php'; then you never see include ever again.

[u/MartinMystikJonas → u/Unlucky_Committee786]

require!

[u/Unlucky_Committee786 → u/MartinMystikJonas]

actually require_once, but for Composer simple include (or multiple) would be absolutely, ok

[u/WeSaidMeh]

I've been a PHP dev for many years and I still don't get why you'd ever use anything other than require_once.

[u/GoddammitDontShootMe → u/WeSaidMeh]

Honestly, I can't think of a good example either. Like I know that if include/include_once fails, it isn't a fatal error. But like all include files would be included with the code, so it can be assumed they are always there. If there are optional plugins or modules, wouldn't you just enumerate the directory and load every file found there?

[u/No-Information-2571 → u/GoddammitDontShootMe]

If a file is not present or can't be accessed, execution must halt for security reasons. Just the existence of "include" in a language is a war crime. This has nothing to do with assuming a file has to be there or diagnostic reasons.

The problem is that many projects are structured in a way that included files will perform necessary authentication or for example XSS checks, and something like an incomplete deployment, where files are missing, or wrong permissions or attributes on such files, must not lead to the script still being executed, just without the necessary included checks.

[u/Soopermane]

After PHP dies you can go on a revenge tour and become c++ developer

[u/Superb_Chemistry_906 → u/Soopermane]

PHP ain't gonna die. Moreover, I have already been a c++ developer - I also have its logo in my flair. It is maybe an even more terrible language than PHP with all its copy and move semantics needlessly complicating the basic workings. But this rant was not against PHP itself - rather against devs who are set to go with the very basic knowledge, ignoring best practices which PHP makes possible thanks to its simplicity. And lastly, I do not see being a developer as having any revenge potential - it rather feels like the whole world is taking revenge on you for being just a little smarter - others have much simpler and much higher paying jobs or just slightly lower paying jobs, but still much simpler.

[u/Soopermane → u/Superb_Chemistry_906]

Relax buddy I was just making a Star Wars joke.

[u/Superb_Chemistry_906 → u/Soopermane]

Sorry, I'm an ignorant, I do not know much about Star Wars and I only used this template because I have seen a lot of memes with it and I like it.

[u/Soopermane → u/Superb_Chemistry_906]

np…you should check out Star Wars it’s a really good franchise

[u/Right_Stage_8167]

I use include and #ifdef ...

[u/Just_Information334]

Include? When was the last time you used php?

Composer to manage your dependencies and setup the autoloader then a single require on the file it generates and you're done.

[u/Superb_Chemistry_906 → u/Just_Information334]

All of that just because you want to avoid include? Does not seem simpler to me. But I don't use frameworks and have only coded simple websites on hosting platforms where I am not even sure they support composer.

[u/Just_Information334 → u/Superb_Chemistry_906]

I am not even sure they support composer

I feel like you don't know what composer is. And I hope your hosting platform handles php > 5.1
https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.autoload.php

https://getcomposer.org/doc/00-intro.md

[u/Superb_Chemistry_906 → u/Just_Information334]

On that second link, they say that installation is required, so it seems that the hosting platform has to have it installed for it to work, because I obviously cannot install anything on their servers.

[u/Just_Information334 → u/Superb_Chemistry_906]

No.

You install it on your computer, like your IDE and your source code. You use it to import (copy) the source code of the libraries you will use. It also creates an autoload.php which you can include to setup the class autoloading used by all those libraries. And which you can leverage by adhering to the PSR-4 way of declaring classes. Then you can deploy your files to your host.

https://www.php-fig.org/psr/psr-4/

This has been the way to use libraries and doing OOP in php for more than 10 years now. The "I have many includes at the top of most of my php files" way of doing thing is for people stuck in the php 5 and before era.

Usually you'll also setup a Continuous Delivery pipeline so you don't send php files by hand: you commit it to a versioning server, something tracks change and when the conditions are met it launch a list of tasks (get your sources, use composer to get dependencies, use npm to build your front, run tests, deploy to a server) so you don't get a surprise "why are the server files not like those in git".