Question

Help with OO

Asked by: qwertq

Just starting out with OO PHP.

I am trying to follow the singleton pattern to set up a base class. This will hold basic information about my site and be subclassed by other modules acting as the link between them all.

I am getting this error:
Fatal error: Using $this when not in object context in ...

It does not like me using $this->config['testing'] = '123';

Here is my code:

class Site {

      private static $instance;
      public $config = array();
      
      private function __construct() {
            // Restrict instantiaton to getInstance()
      }
      private function __clone() {
            // Restrict cloning of object
      }
      
   public static function getInstance() {
        if (empty(self::$instance)) {
                  self::$instance = new Site();
                  
                  // Set up config values                  
                  self::initConfig();

        }
        return self::$instance;
    }

      private function initConfig() {
            $this->config['testing'] = '123';
      }

}

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Asked On
2007-09-19 at 06:39:06ID22838603
Topic

PHP Scripting Language

Participating Experts
2
Points
250
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: RQuadlingPosted on 2007-09-19 at 06:58:52ID: 19920644

Take a look at the following user notes on http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.patterns.php

http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.patterns.php#53483
http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.patterns.php#52027
http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.patterns.php#52021
http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.patterns.php#52003
etc.

Basically, you can't make a subclass a singleton to be extended as only the base class's constructor can be called and that has to be private and static to stop the manual creation by new.

In your code, $this should still be self as you are dealing with it statically.

 

by: qwertqPosted on 2007-09-19 at 07:01:26ID: 19920672

 

by: StormMajikPosted on 2007-09-19 at 07:03:29ID: 19920694

<?php
class Site {
    private static $instance;
    public $config = array();
     
    private function __construct() {
            // Restrict instantiaton to getInstance()
            $this->config['testing'] = '123';
    }
    private function __clone() {
            // Restrict cloning of object
    }
     
    public static function getInstance() {
        if (empty(self::$instance)) {
                  self::$instance = new Site();
                 
        // Set up config values                  
        //self::initConfig();

        }
        return self::$instance;
    }

    //private function initConfig() {
    //        $this->config['testing'] = '123';
    //}

}

$x = Site::getInstance();
print_r($x);
?>

Try that...

 

by: qwertqPosted on 2007-09-19 at 07:13:12ID: 19920784

StormMajik, that worked. Can you shed some light on why mine wasn't?

Also, I am worried about using this. If i update a value in the $config it could get accidently erased because there is something in the __construct.

 

by: RQuadlingPosted on 2007-09-19 at 07:20:05ID: 19920846

A singleton exists once. A theoretical subclass of singleton is still a singleton and therefore you can't create a second instance.

I use a singletonDBFactory to create singletonDBConnections. I connect to many different DB types (MSSQL, mySQL, MS Access, MS Excel, Sage Retrieve 4GL, etc), but I don't want to connect more than once to any of them. And as they are all the same, I have a factory to create them for me and I only want one of them also.

But I cheat on the connectors. These are all owned by the factory and as such I can determine if I've already connected.

Mix and match.

But extending singletons isn't right.

 

by: StormMajikPosted on 2007-09-19 at 07:56:44ID: 19921186

If I recall correctly you are calling initConfig statically but then trying to used $this which won't fly - . I moved the init task to the constructor as that is its job when the class is created. Just because it cannot be used outside the class does not mean you cannot used it at all :-)

 

by: StormMajikPosted on 2007-09-20 at 01:51:29ID: 19926908

As RQuadling mentions, a singleton is just that a class resticted to a single instance, and an instance represents an object of that class. Extending such a thing is a strange way of doing things.

If you want to represent a central point for accessing a variety of data look at the registry pattern. The registry itself is often a singleton but it will contain arrays of data. A factory pattern (actually factory method to be exact) can be used to produce these instances.

If you want prime examples of this in action take a look at Joomla, and download their code - these people are really clever

\joomla\libraries\joomla\factory.php - lots of singletons!
\joomla\libraries\joomla\registry\registry.php - maybe what you need.

and if you are wondering how they do this with PHP4 compatible code take a look at the 'base' class.




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