多个项目之间PHP框架中的代码重用

Question

This is my first question here. :)

I am working on a little php framework and started to think of ways to re-use the same code between multiple projects. Right now with this framework it is possible to make multiple application directories for different projects and use the same core - similar of what codeigniter 2 does.

The question about code reuse raised at work when I needed to make a website that is quite different from existing one, but would still use classes from it.

My first two ideas was either use some kind of a global "models" directory where to place files shared between multiple projects (and add option to framework to load them), or to add a possibility to load these "models" from other project(s).

I thought maybe somebody else have some better ideas and wanted to know other developer thoughts on the subject in general.

As an example this could be the current directory structure:

live/ - live site
 config/
 controllers/
 helpers/
 models/
 public/
 views/
admin/ - administration (same structure as "live/")
system/ - framework core

Answer 1

Well I don't think loading models or other classes directly from another project is a good idea. If two or more projects share the same classes, they should be located somewhere outside of both projects. This is the situation where the codeigniter packages comes in handy. It allows to have separate folder for all of your libraries, models etc. and load them in any codeigniter project very easily. Take a look at the official documentation for more details.