PHP5.5: Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class

Question

since I upgraded from PHP 5.2 to 5.5 I get an error I don't understand by now.

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class sessionHandler in ... on line ...

Well before updating the PHP version this error didn't raise and redeclaring a class should be an error independent from PHP version as I guess. Further I always use require_once() which should help to avoid a mistake on that.

So just to make sure it doesn't be redeclared, I added a backtrace code block before that class declaration. So hopefully, I thought it would output twice, but I get only one backtrace output at all. Therefore it gets declared only once from my point of few.

Do I miss something? Any idea how to find the "real" issue?

What's the class name? Maybe the class name is already used in PHP. — Andrius, Oct 30 '15 at 10:32
Here, you go: http://php.net/manual/en/class.sessionhandler.php — Andrius, Oct 30 '15 at 10:36

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 30 '15 at 10:37

Class "SessionHandler" already exists in the namespace as it's a class in PHP - http://php.net/manual/en/class.sessionhandler.php

Looks like the class was included in PHP 5.4 so it explains everything.

Try to think of some other name for the class or define a namespace. If you create a namespace, something like..

namespace App;
class sessionHandler {
....

you won't get the error anymore but you will need to use App\sessionHandler whenever you're referring to your own class.

Perfect! Thanks for the very fast and correct solution. – user1578497 Oct 30 '15 at 10:44 — user1578497, Oct 30 '15 at 10:44

PHP5.5: Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class

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