Best practice for abstract classes

[squizlabs]

Best practice for abstract classes

[aik099]

Construct for including file is a side effect. I recommend using auto-loader or disabling that particular inspection.

[gsherwood]

I see your point in this case, but that sniff just implements the PSR-1 standard: https://github.com/php-fig/fig-standards/blob/master/accepted/PSR-1-basic-coding-standard.md#23-side-effects

Which states:

"Side effects" include but are not limited to: generating output, explicit use of require or include, connecting to external services, modifying ini settings, emitting errors or exceptions, modifying global or static variables, reading from or writing to a file, and so on.

And then shows this example:

// side effect: loads a file
include "file.php";

I was not involved with the creation of PSR-1 and so I don't know if this was just overlooked or if the authors want you to only include class files using an autoloader. But I think the standard is fairly clear, even if it doesn't take this scenario into account.

The other point is that PHP_CodeSniffer can't go around looking for that file you included to find out if it includes side effects. So the message is a warning, which you can choose to ignore on a file-by-file basis if you'd like, or by coding the exception into a ruleset.xml file. That's really the most I can do for you in this case due to the way PHP_CodeSniffer works.

[fulldecent]

Thanks for the help, and I agree that this software is correct in implement the PSR-1 as specified. Since includes may or may not produce side effects and since it is impossible before runtime to know which file will be included then the rule is reasonable.

The problem here is that I was being lazy and trying to avoid the PHP-ism of autoloaders :-(