How reuse custom code among projects using PHP natively?

Question

I am not familiar with PHP and having a background in C#.

I would like to know if PHP offers a way to share custom code among projects natively in the language (targeting the latest version of PHP)?

As in C# there is the possibility to create a custom DLL, that can be included in other projects when needed in order to reuse some code.

• Does PHP offer a similar feature?
• Does PHP packages related on that?
• Can PHP namespace be useful in this scenario?
• What bout the use of include?
• If PHP does not offer this support, which project/library can be used?

I understand there is the possibility to share common code from a versioning system such SVN and checkout sharedcode in each related project (as described in other answer on SO), but I am interested in the possibility in the language itself.

Answer 1

I think with phar archives and composer you get as close to assemblies and nuget as you can get.

Answer 2

You can share code with composers packages, more on:

https://packagist.org/
https://getcomposer.org/

Answer 3

You should try a php framework like Laravel or Zend Framework. If you don't want to try a framework, there are couple of ways.

You can create a class of functions and then you can include that class wherever you want in your scripts. This is a simplest example.

namespaces are your friends. I highly recommend yo to have a look at here for PHP and here for a PHP framework.