| isChild |
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true |
As mentioned above, the PHP community has a lot of developers creating lots of code. This means that one library's PHP code may use the same class name as another library. When both libraries are used in the same namespace, they collide and cause trouble.
Namespaces solve this problem. As described in the PHP reference manual, namespaces may be compared to operating system directories that namespace files; two files with the same name may co-exist in separate directories. Likewise, two PHP classes with the same name may co-exist in separate PHP namespaces. It's as simple as that.
It is important for you to namespace your code so that it may be used by other developers without fear of colliding with other libraries.
One recommended way to use namespaces is outlined in PSR-0, which aims to provide a standard file, class and namespace convention to allow plug-and-play code.
In December 2013 the PHP-FIG created a new autoloading standard: PSR-4, which one day will probably replace PSR-0. Currently both are still usable, as PSR-4 requires PHP 5.3 and many PHP 5.2-only projects currently implement PSR-0. If you're going to use an autoloader standard for a new application or package then you almost certainly want to look into PSR-4.