Opinions sought on the best way to organise classes in PHP

I am pretty much set on using the Java package naming convention of

com.website.app.whatever

but am unsure about the best way of doing this in PHP.

Option 1:

Create a directory structure

com/
    mysite/
          myapp/
               encryption/
                         PublicKeyGenerator.class.php
                         Cipher.class.php
               Xml/
                         XmlHelper.class.php
                         XmlResponse.class.php

Now this is how Java does it, it uses the folders to organize the heirarchy. This is however a little clumsy in PHP because there is no native support for it and when you move things around you break all includes.

Option 2

Name classes using a periods for the package, therefore names are just like in Java but can all be in the same directory making __autoload a breeze.

classes/
        com.mysite.myapp.encription.PublicKeyGenerator.class.php
        com.mysite.myapp.encription.Cipher.class.php
        com.mysite.myapp.xml.XmlHelper.class.php
        com.mysite.myapp.xml.XmlResponse.class.php

The only real disadvantage here is that all the classes are in a single folder which might be confusing for large projects.

Opinions sought, which is the best or are there other even better options?

Solution

You could follow Zend Framework standards like

Option1 with autoload

new App_Encryption_Cipher

in autoload magic callback replace the _ to '/' and do further checking (the file exists? garbage in the filename being seek? symbols?)

This is however a little clumsy in PHP because there is no native support for it and when >> you move things around you break all includes.

Depends on how you plan/design your application. there is no escape when it comes to refactoring anyway :)

I know you are used to java naming conventions, but if you do something like (new com_mysite_myapp_encryption_cypher) well, it kinda becomes a pain to write all the time