PHPRiot has started up a new series looking to introduce you to the Zend Framework one piece at a time. In this first article n the series Quentin Zervaas looks at one of the first components any Zend Framework-based application hits - Zend_Loader.

In this article I will introduce you to Zend_Loader, a Zend Framework class used to automatically load other classes. Typically you would use include_once() or require_once() when you want to load a class but using Zend_Loader you don't have to.

He talks some about how it works, how to enable an disable it and how you can replace it with your own custom autoloader if you want. He gives an example of doing this, overriding the loader with a call to registerAutoload to register his autoloader class.