What and Why of Namespacing

What is PHP namespace? Why should you care about using it versus prefixing? What does it give you? What are the advantages? Let’s talk about it.

The first thing to know is: the web server must be running at least PHP 5.3.0. This is an old version of PHP. It stopped being supported as of August 2014. It’s old. Shoot, 5.4 and 5.5 are old too and no longer supported. Check out the supported versions here on the PHP manual website.

PHP namespace encapsulates your code. What does that mean? It means you are putting a container around your code. You are enclosing it. The components within the namespace are then named with the namespace + a separator + the component’s name.

PHP namespace is:

• a naming scheme
• that seeks to encapsulate your code
• to prevent naming collisions
• promote modular architectures
• make your code more readable, reusable, and maintainable
• gives context to further understand the code and how to use it

The naming convention is:

CompanyName\PackageName\Module\SubModule

or

Company_Name\Package_Name\Module\Sub_Module

The PackageName can be your theme, plugin, or standalone module or package that you reuse over and over again.