DevShed has posted the latest article (the last) in their series looking at the "magic functions" that PHP has to offer. This time they take a closer look at the autoload functionality.

PHP 5 offers yet another magic method that can be extremely useful for loading classes automatically, without having to use explicitly any "include()/include_once()" or "require()/require_once()" function. As the article's title suggests, I'm talking specifically about the "__autoload()" function, which deserves a deeper analysis.

Their example shows how to define the __authoload method for your application to load in libraries as they're needed, without having to specifically define them.