XC_VM/docs/en/development/autoloader.md

Autoloading (PSR-4)

XC_VM autoloads classes with a standard Composer PSR-4 autoloader; the namespace encodes the file path, so resolution is a direct file_exists with no scan and no cache.

---

Overview

Every first-party class lives under the XcVm\ root namespace, mapped to src/:

XcVm\Core\Auth\Authenticator   ->  src/Core/Auth/Authenticator.php
XcVm\Domain\Stream\StreamService ->  src/Domain/Stream/StreamService.php
XcVm\Public\Controllers\Admin\UserController -> src/Public/Controllers/Admin/UserController.php

The mapping is declared in src/composer.json:

"autoload": {
    "psr-4": {
        "XcVm\\": "./",
        "M3uParser\\": "Core/Parsing/M3uParser/src/",
        "Chrisyue\\PhpM3u8\\": "Core/Parsing/PhpM3u8/src/"
    }
}

src/vendor/ (the Composer autoloader + production dependencies) is committed and shipped — the deploy path has no Composer and never runs composer install. There is no class-map cache (no optimize-autoloader): a class miss is a plain path lookup, not a directory rescan.

Adding a new class

Create the file at the path its namespace maps to — that is all; Composer resolves it on demand:

// src/Domain/Billing/InvoiceService.php
namespace XcVm\Domain\Billing;

class InvoiceService {
    public static function generate(int $userId): string { /* ... */ }
}

Reference it from other namespaced code with a use import, or by its FQCN:

use XcVm\Domain\Billing\InvoiceService;

No cache to clear, no registry to edit. A brand-new sub-namespace (e.g. XcVm\Domain\Billing) works immediately because it maps straight onto the directory.

Naming rules

Rule	Example
File name must match the class name	InvoiceService.php → class InvoiceService
One class per file	PSR-4 resolves one class per path; split multi-class files
Namespace must match the directory path (case-sensitive)	src/Domain/Billing/ → namespace XcVm\Domain\Billing;
PascalCase classes and directories	StreamService, DatabaseHandler, Core/Auth/
Project convention: no declare(strict_types=1)	—

Because the namespace carries the location, duplicate short names in different namespaces no longer collide — XcVm\Public\Controllers\Admin\PlexController and XcVm\Module\Plex\PlexController are distinct.

Procedural and third-party files

Some files are intentionally not namespaced and are loaded by explicit require, not the autoloader:

• procedural entry points, views and bootstrap glue (e.g. Public/index.php, Public/Views/**, Infrastructure/Bootstrap/*.php);
• global constants and functions (Core/Config/*, error handler);
• the ioncube XC_VM class and bundled Infrastructure/Tmdb/lib/*.

The vendored M3uParser and Chrisyue\PhpM3u8 packages have their own PSR-4 prefixes (above) and autoload normally.

Modules

Module classes use the XcVm\Module\<Name>\… namespace but are not registered in composer.json (module/marketplace slug directories — plex, watch-d2bho — do not fit a single PSR-4 rule). They are resolved by ModuleLoader's own PSR-4 resolver: it strips the module's base namespace and maps the remainder onto a sub-path under the module directory. See Module System.

Dev tooling

The committed vendor/ is production-only. PHPStan and phpcs are require-dev packages — install them locally with:

make dev-tools   # = cd src && composer install

They are never committed (a CI gate enforces a prod-only committed vendor). See Development Workflow.

Related files

File	Role
src/composer.json	PSR-4 prefix map + dependencies
src/composer.lock	committed lock for reproducible composer install
src/vendor/	committed Composer autoloader + production deps
src/bootstrap.php	defines MAIN_HOME, requires vendor/autoload.php
src/Core/Module/ModuleLoader.php	PSR-4 resolver for module classes