php - list of all classes that extends a given class

Question

I am building a little cms and I would like to know which is the best way to preceed.

Suppose I have classes myClassA , myClassB , myClassC , ... that extend a given class myClass .

I need a function to list all the classes MyClass* that extend MyClass . Is there a simple and safe way to do this just with PHP, or should I mantain the list somewhere else (maybe a table in the database)?

I hope the question is clear enough...

Answer 1

I would use scandir(C:// .... /[directory with files in]); to get an array containing all files and folders in that selected directory.

I would then remove '.' and '..' as these are for navigation of directories. Then in a foreach() loop use if(! is_dir($single_item)) to get all files that aren't directories. After this you have a list of files and directories. I would then remove the directory navigation '.' and '..' from the array.

Then as before I would read the contents of the file using file_get_contents(), then split the words using explode() exploding by a [space]. I would then use a regex expression '~MyClass[A-Za-z0-9]~' (or other applicable expression) using preg_match() and store all matches in an array. I would finally filter these by using array_filter() to get a unique list you can use however you like

//directory to scan
$dir = "C:\ ...\[directory you want]";

//scan root directory for files
$root = scandir($dir);

//delete directory listings from array (directory navigation)
$disallowed_values = array(".", "..");
foreach($disallowed_values as $disallowed)
{
    if(($key = array_search($disallowed, $root)) !== false)
    {
        unset($root[$key]);
    }
}

//if array is not empty (no files / folders found)
if(! empty($root))
{
    //empty array for items you want found.
    $class_array = array();

    //for each directory
    foreach($root as $item)
    {
        if(! is_dir("$dir" . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . "$item"))
        {
            //get file contents
            $file_content = file_get_contents("$dir" . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . "$item");

            //pattern to search for
            $pattern = "~MyClass[A-Za-z0-9]*~";

            //create array with results for single file
            preg_match_all($pattern, $file_content, $result);

            //use $result to populate class_array(); use print_r($result); to check what it is outputting (based on your file's structures)
        }
    }
}

//get unique items from array_filter - remove duplicates
$class_array = array_filter($class_array);

//use array of items however you like