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# Autoloading Objects

Many developers writing object-oriented applications create one PHP source file per-class definition. One of the biggest annoyances is having to write a long list of needed includes at the beginning of each script (one for each class).

In PHP 5, this is no longer necessary. You may define an __autoload function which is automatically called in case you are trying to use a class which hasn't been defined yet. By calling this function the scripting engine is given a last chance to load the class before PHP fails with an error.

> Note: Exceptions thrown in __autoload function cannot be caught in the catch block and results in a fatal error.

Example 19-6. Autoload example This example attempts to load the classes MyClass1 and MyClass2 from the files `MyClass1.php` and `MyClass2.php` respectively.
`<?php function __autoload($class_name) { require_once $class_name . '.php'; } $obj = new MyClass1(); $obj2 = new MyClass2(); ?>`

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