Problems with PHP namespaces and built-in classes, how to fix?

Question

I'm writing a small library in PHP and i'm having some problems with built-in classes not being read. For example:

namespace Woody;  class Test {   public function __construct() {     $db = new PDO(params);   } } 

This gives me:

PHP Fatal error: Class 'Woody\PDO' not found in /var/www/test.php

Answer 1

This:

namespace Woody; use PDO; 

Or:

$db = new \PDO(params); 

Point in case is, that the class PDO is not a full qualified name within your Namespace, so PHP would look for Woody\PDO which is not available.

See Name resolution rules^Docs for a detailed description how class names are resolved to a Fully qualified name.

Answer 2

Add a backslash before class name, ie

$db = new \PDO(params);