Dear List, I realized the other day that ReflectionFile is missing from the Reflection API.
A search for "ReflectionFile" on Google will reveal a number of implementations of classes with exactly that name, which suggests users are missing this - for example: https://github.com/rmccue/ReflectionFile/blob/master/ReflectionFile.php I think reflecting on files used to be less important than it is now - with the addition of namespaces, and the ability to import classes and interfaces from other namespaces, there are some interesting and useful aspects of files that could be exposed via Reflection. One thing that comes to mind, is with custom annotation libraries for PHP - some libraries (such as my own) permit you to globally set custom aliases to make annotation-names shorter and more useful, others resort to making you type the fully qualified class-name every time you want to apply an annotation. Neither approach is very elegant. This is addressed by the language, by allowing you to import classes and interfaces - annotation libraries could discover imported annotation types this way, but that aspect of the source code is not exposed via Reflection. Any thoughts? - Rasmus Schultz
