[Resolved] detecting undefined functions that are being called, and defining them

Brendan_Nolan

I have a great big function bin, and at the moment I have a script that includes each of them thus defining them.

This is working great. But as more and more functions are added to the bin it will become more and more inefficient.

A lot of the functions may not be used in any particular call to my application.

Is there some way that I can define the function only if it is required?

swr

Hmm... You might be able to make something work with [man]set_error_handler[/man], but I doubt it. You could extract the function name from the error message, include the right file, and call the function... but you wouldn't have the arugments, so it would be of limited usefulness.

The usual way to handle functions is to organize them into seperate include files. All database abstraction in one include file, all form handling functions in another include file, etc. Then each script includes only the files it needs. This sometimes means including a whole file of a couple dozen functions when you only need one, but it's a reasonable tradeoff.

k994519

hey dude

You could put each function into groups i.e the database ones into a file called database.php

all your html output functions into a file called html.php

dont forget to include the file for each page that needs the functions

seems the most effective way for me... however thats my 2 cents
does not mean its right.....

crw beat me to it..... he he :rolleyes:

Brendan_Nolan

Yeah, grouping the functions like that isn't really going to be any good for me...

I like the error catching idea, but as you said, I could get the function name from the message, but not the arguments.

Is it possible to restart the parsing from a particular line / character?

So I could extract the function name, define it, and then start again from the line and character?

Or perhaps go to that line and use some regexs to find the arguments?

But would the script continue to run nicely?

Maybe it is just for the "too hard basket". Must weigh up the smallish advantage against the time that would be wasted on it...

drew010

unless your function script is REALLY large, like several hundred functions, there probably isnt much of a performance degradation by including them. i would imagine that jumping lines in the file using regex to extract the arguments would take more time and resources than just having the file included.

since including a file will bring the entire file in for compilation all functions will be compiled for execution. unfortunately there are no preprocessor style defintions in php like there is in c/c++.

perhaps you should use a timer class to see how much time it really takes to use the include, and then how long without it. use the getmicrotime function below from php.net to create a start time and end time. first run the script w/ the include and see how much longer it takes the script to run.

function getmicrotime()
{
list($usec, $sec) = explode(" ", microtime());
return ((float)$usec + (float)$sec);
}