Question

I am working on a simple abstract database class. In my usage of this class, I’ll want to have some instance be a singleton. I was thinking of having a abstract class that is not a singleton, and then extend it into another abstract class that is a singleton. Is this possible? Recommended?

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Edit: I want to have two abstract that are practically identical, except one is a singleton. So the only difference will be that one will have all the functions of the other, but will have the other properties and methods that make it behave like a singleton.

I’d like to have one base class code base for this so as I make changes, I don’t have to keep two files in sync.

Answer 1

In the way that I do things, I believe that there’s no use for an abstract singleton. This is because,

1) What you want to be a singleton is the final class you instantiate for use within the application whether it’d be a library, model, controller or view and NOT the abstract.

2) Adding the singleton method is easy and can be written in 8 lines. See below.

protected static $_instance;
public static function getInstance()
{
    if (!isset(self::$_instance)) {
        self::$_instance = new self();
    }
    self::$_instance;
}

3) PHP 5.3 below version doesn’t support late static binding. This will result in instantiating the abstract class instead of the final class inheriting it and will not function as expected, as already mentioned by Gordon and nuqqsa. So, for backward compatibility, better avoid it.