[php] How to include() all PHP files from a directory?

In PHP can I include a directory of scripts?

i.e. Instead of:

include('classes/Class1.php');
include('classes/Class2.php');

is there something like:

include('classes/*');

Couldn't seem to find a good way of including a collection of about 10 sub-classes for a particular class.

this is just a modification of Karsten's code

function include_all_php($folder){
    foreach (glob("{$folder}/*.php") as $filename)
    {
        include $filename;
    }
}

include_all_php("my_classes");

I suggest you use a readdir() function and then loop and include the files (see the 1st example on that page).

I realize this is an older post BUT... DON'T INCLUDE YOUR CLASSES... instead use __autoload

function __autoload($class_name) {
    require_once('classes/'.$class_name.'.class.php');
}

$user = new User();

Then whenever you call a new class that hasn't been included yet php will auto fire __autoload and include it for you

How to do this in 2017:

spl_autoload_register( function ($class_name) {
    $CLASSES_DIR = __DIR__ . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . 'classes' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;  // or whatever your directory is
    $file = $CLASSES_DIR . $class_name . '.php';
    if( file_exists( $file ) ) include $file;  // only include if file exists, otherwise we might enter some conflicts with other pieces of code which are also using the spl_autoload_register function
} );

Recommended by PHP documentation here: Autoloading classes

If there are NO dependencies between files... here is a recursive function to include_once ALL php files in ALL subdirs:

$paths = array();

function include_recursive( $path, $debug=false){
  foreach( glob( "$path/*") as $filename){        
    if( strpos( $filename, '.php') !== FALSE){ 
       # php files:
       include_once $filename;
       if( $debug) echo "<!-- included: $filename -->\n";
    } else { # dirs
       $paths[] = $filename; 
    }
  }
  # Time to process the dirs:
  for( $i=count($paths)-1; $i>0; $i--){
    $path = $paths[$i];
    unset( $paths[$i]);
    include_recursive( $path);
  }
}

include_recursive( "tree_to_include");
# or... to view debug in page source:
include_recursive( "tree_to_include", 'debug');

You can use set_include_path:

set_include_path('classes/');

http://php.net/manual/en/function.set-include-path.php

Do no write a function() to include files in a directory. You may lose the variable scopes, and may have to use "global". Just loop on the files.

Also, you may run into difficulties when an included file has a class name that will extend to the other class defined in the other file - which is not yet included. So, be careful.

<?php
//Loading all php files into of functions/ folder 

$folder =   "./functions/"; 
$files = glob($folder."*.php"); // return array files

 foreach($files as $phpFile){   
     require_once("$phpFile"); 
}

If your looking to include a bunch of classes without having to define each class at once you can use:

$directories = array(
            'system/',
            'system/db/',
            'system/common/'
);
foreach ($directories as $directory) {
    foreach(glob($directory . "*.php") as $class) {
        include_once $class;
    }
}

This way you can just define the class on the php file containing the class and not a whole list of $thisclass = new thisclass();

As for how well it handles all the files? I'm not sure there might be a slight speed decrease with this.

Here is the way I include lots of classes from several folders in PHP 5. This will only work if you have classes though.

/*Directories that contain classes*/
$classesDir = array (
    ROOT_DIR.'classes/',
    ROOT_DIR.'firephp/',
    ROOT_DIR.'includes/'
);
function __autoload($class_name) {
    global $classesDir;
    foreach ($classesDir as $directory) {
        if (file_exists($directory . $class_name . '.php')) {
            require_once ($directory . $class_name . '.php');
            return;
        }
    }
}

If you want include all in a directory AND its subdirectories:

$dir = "classes/";
$dh  = opendir($dir);
$dir_list = array($dir);
while (false !== ($filename = readdir($dh))) {
    if($filename!="."&&$filename!=".."&&is_dir($dir.$filename))
        array_push($dir_list, $dir.$filename."/");
}
foreach ($dir_list as $dir) {
    foreach (glob($dir."*.php") as $filename)
        require_once $filename;
}

Don't forget that it will use alphabetic order to include your files.