Question

I am trying to extend the PDO class as well as turn it into a singleton. The only problem is that PDO’s constructor is public, and PHP will not let me override it as a protected method. Is there any imaginative way around this? Will I be stuck with that loose end forever if I attempt this? An alternative may be not to extend PDO, but rather hold it in a static property, and do operations with it, but I wanted my class to retain all of the functionality of PDO if possible.

Answer 1

You can just wrap the PDO class in your own “Singleton Factory” object. Basically, you implement your own singleton that contains a (single) PDO instance. (Note that I don’t know PHP syntax so this is Java, but you should be able to get the idea)

MySingletonFactory.getInstance().getPDO();

A more verbose explaination can be found here: http://www.wikijava.org/wiki/Singleton_Factory_patterns_example

(Again, Java … sorry – but I believe it’ll get you where you where you want to go)