Including the SVN class in a PHP Project - php

Question

So this probably has a simple answer, but I'm not finding it anywhere.
I have the following code:
function getSVN(){
$svn = new SVN;
$log = $svn->log('https://svn.repo/trunk/', SVN::HEAD);
}
Not surprisingly, I get the following error:
Fatal error: Class 'SVN' not found
So I tried to include it using:
use SVN;
But I got:
Warning: The use statement with non-compound name 'SVN' has no effect
What's the proper way to include PHP's SVN class?

Answer 1

The SVN PHP client requires an additional PHP extension to be loaded.
http://php.net/manual/en/svn.installation.php has some general installation instructions but the real gold is in the comments.
Aptitude systems (incl. Ubuntu)
sudo apt-get php5-svn
Aptitude tends to resolve dependencies so we're good in that front.
Yellowdog Updater, Modified (yum) systems
yum install subversion subversion-devel neon neon-devel
pecl install svn
Windows
Download the DLL if you can find one.
Otherwise compile from source.
Works on all systems
Compile from source
Following all this you need to ensure that either:
1) There is a relevant entry in php.ini which enables this extension: e.g. extension=svn.so (or DLL)
2) There is a relevant configuration .ini file which is included with php (the path where this should be is stated in phpinfo();)
In any case the extension needs to show up in the php -m list

Answer 2

Although this question is nearly 3 years old as I post this, I would like to contribute my solution to possibly help others who have encountered errors on Redhat style machines.
I was able to successfully install it via RPM package install. The links below may help you, depending on OS and PHP version.
www.rpmfind.net
centos.pkgs.org
I simply followed the instructions from CentOS packages and the php pecl-svn extension installed with no issues on the Redhat 6.9 PHP 5.6 server. Hopefully the same works for you. Best of luck.