Quick and Easy PHP Singleton

Hi guys

A really short one today, just because someone asked me about it a couple of days ago. I also though it potentially best to avoid something as controversial as my last post about Eloquent and the Single Responsibility Principle, which caused a bit of a stir during the week.

So, you want to make sure you only ever use one specific instance of a class (maybe a DB connection) and need a quick and easy way to do it. Personally, this is the technique I would use:

<?php

class MySingleton{
  
  // This will hold the instance of the class
  private static $instance = null;
  
  // Declare this as private to stop anybody being able to use the "new" keyword
  private function __construct()
  {
    // Your usual constructor stuff in here
  }

  // This is where you get your instance
  public static function getInstance()
  {
    if(is_null(self::$instance)){
      self::$instance = new self();
    } 
    return self::$instance;
  }

}

All we’re doing here really, in a set of steps:

• You need a way to hold an instance of the object which is persistent throughout the execution
  This is what the private static $instance is doing
• You don’t want anybody to be able to directly use the new keyword, because then you’ve lost control of the instances of the object
• You need to be able to get an instance of the class, which is what the getInstance method is for
• In getInstance all we’re doing is instantiating the object if one hasn’t get been stored against the $instance static

So, to fetch your instance is simply:

$singleton = MySingleton::getInstance();

Wherever you run that throughout your code you will receive the exact same instance. Particularly useful in things like Database connections, loggers/debuggers and things like that.