browse by tag: SPL

The Standard PHP Library (SPL)

in PHP added by CalEvans, on 1/10/2007 SPL Zend advanced tutorials

As its name implies, the goal of the Standard PHP Library-or SPL, for short-is to provide a standard library of interfaces that allows developers to take full advantage of object-oriented programming in PHP 5.
This library of interfaces creates a standard API for certain kinds of built-in functionality, allowing your classes to interact with the PHP engine in a much more seamless manner. The functionality it provides includes, for example, the ability to define how your objects will react when iterated over with foreach, advanced array access, file and directory access, and advanced SimpleXML object handling. The largest chunk of functionality that the SPL provides comes in the form of iterators.