Packages in PHP?

Question

Is it possible to create packages of related classes and have the same protected and private fields which are visible only to classes from within the same package?

Basically, the same type of packages as what Java has. Is it possible?

Answer 1

Right now, there is no concept of package.

However, PHP 5.3 is going to introduce namespaces. I'm not sure about how that will affect visibility between classes.

Answer 2

Nope. PHP has no package or friend-class support.

Answer 3

You might be interested to read http://philsturgeon.co.uk/blog/2012/03/packages-the-way-forward-for-php

Short answer - http://getcomposer.org/

Answer 4

Here are two approaches I've stumbled upon pondering the same issue:

Simulating Packages in PHP

PHP Package Management and Autoloading

And it looks like there are some more import analogs in the PHP require_once() docs. Hope it helps someone going forward.