Question

I want to create a PDO class for handling data base connections.

Here is what I have:

require('php/packages/store/store_db_settings.php');

class store_pdo
{
    private $DBH; // Data Base Handler

    function __construct() 
    {
        $DBH = new PDO(DB_DSN,DB_USER,DB_PASSWORD);
    }

    public function getHandler()
    {
        return $DBH;
    }

}

I think this seems ok, however I am used to just using things like mysql_query and not really sure what problems I could run into in the future. So I thought the experience here could offer guidance.

Is what I have sufficient? should I make my class Singleton, or use static functions? Is there a best practice?

I don’t want to go with this, then I after have several other classes using it, discover that I should have written it differently.

P.S. I just noticed that the best-practices tag is no longer allowed… does that mean questions like this are discouraged now too?

Answer 1

A Singleton and a static class would both work fine. I can’t think of a situation when it would make a difference.

Make sure that if there ever may be the possibility of using multiple connections, you make your Singleton/Static class multi-connection capable from the start (using an array of connections, or object properties…)

It could be argued, though, that all these methods create a “God Object” of some sort, are nothing but a glorified global, and go against the principles of real OOP. I asked a question about this once that yielded a lot of great feedback.