Way back in 2009, PHP 5.3 was released to the world and with it brought support for PHP namespaces — a way of easily separating your code from other developers’ code, which has since become the de facto way of encapsulating functionality across the PHP ecosystem.

With namespaces, multiple packages could use the same class and function names without conflict, because each one would operate in their own PHP namespaces. Unfortunately, many PHP developers who focus on development in frameworks that de-emphasis these features such as WordPress may be in the dark on this extremely useful language feature.

This talk aims to shed light on PHP namespaces, especially targeted developers who haven’t yet encountered them. Attendees will leave the talk with a firm grasp on PHP namespaces, how they work, and how they can be implemented in plugins and themes.