What is autoload in php?

In PHP, the term "autoload" refers to a mechanism that allows classes to be automatically loaded when they are needed, without the need for explicit include or require statements.

Autoloading is particularly useful when working with large codebases or frameworks where there are many classes, as it saves developers the hassle of manually including each file that contains a class definition.

To enable autoloading in PHP, you can use the spl_autoload_register function. This function allows you to register one or more autoloading functions, which will be called whenever an undefined class is encountered. The function should take a single parameter, which is the name of the class to be loaded.

Here is an example of a simple autoloader in PHP:

function my_autoloader($class_name) {
    include_once $class_name . '.php';
}

spl_autoload_register('my_autoloader');

In this example, the my_autoloader function is registered as an autoloader using spl_autoload_register. Whenever an undefined class is encountered, PHP will call the my_autoloader function with the name of the class as a parameter. The function then includes the appropriate file based on the name of the class.