Question

I’m trying to create a simple to use singleton class to connect to mysql database and do queries, the code works fine and i haven’t had any problems with it, but since I’m new to OOP I’m wondering whether this is bad practice or not.

Here’s the class

class Database {
private $databaseName = 'dbname';
private $host = 'localhost';
private $user = 'user';
private $password = 'pass'; 
private static $instance; //store the single instance of the database

private function __construct(){
    //This will load only once regardless of how many times the class is called
    $connection = mysql_connect($this->host, $this->user, $this->password) or die (mysql_error());
    $db = mysql_select_db($this->databaseName, $connection) or die(mysql_error()); 
    echo 'DB initiated<br>';
}

//this function makes sure there's only 1 instance of the Database class
public static function getInstance(){
    if(!self::$instance){
        self::$instance = new Database();
    }
    return self::$instance;     
}

public function connect() { 
    //db connection
} 
public function query($query) {
    //queries   
    $sql = mysql_query($query) or die(mysql_error()); 
    return $sql;
}

public function numrows($query) {
    //count number of rows  
    $sql = $this->query($query);
    return mysql_num_rows($sql);
}


}

//Intantiate the class
$database = Database::getInstance();

and when i want to use the class I would do:

$query = "SELECT * FROM registrations";
echo $database->numrows($query);
$sql = $database->query($query);

Answer 1

Singletons are bad news.

• They introduce global state into a program. Most programmers should be familiar with why global state is bad.
• They introduce tight coupling between the singleton and any class that uses it. This means you can’t reuse the classes in question without reusing the singleton too.
• They make unit testing of classes that depend on the singleton problematic because you can’t easily replace the singleton with a mock.
• They encourage a coding style where classes attempt to resolve their own dependencies. This is bad because it can reduce clarity regarding what dependencies the class has.
• PHP has a Share Nothing Architecture, meaning that PHP singletons aren’t really singletons at all, there can be multiple instances alive at any one time (one per open request).
• What happens if you suddenly discover at some later date that you actually need more than one of the resource that’s being provided by the singleton? It’s a more common scenario than you might think

You’re better off looking at dependency-injection instead, as it resolves the above issues.