Question

I’m trying to setup some classes to work with, but I’m not really sure how to accomplish to following.

Let’s say I have a class “foo” that I’m working in, and I want to use functions from another class called “loader”. The purpose of this loader class is to load various other classes that I can then use within the “foo” class.

Example:

class foo {
    function foo() {
        $this->load->model();
    }
}

For this to work I would first initiate the class “load”:

class foo {
    function foo() {
        $this->load = new loader;
        $this->load->model('some_model');
    }
}

Now I can use the functions from within the loader class. The next thing I want is for the loaded model to be accessible from within the class foo. Example:

class foo {
    function foo() {
        $this->load = new loader;
        $this->load->model('some_model');
        $this->some_model->function_from_this_model();
    }
}

And this is where I get lost, because I’m not sure how to stay within the scope of the “foo” class. At any given time I’d like to be able to use $this->load->model('some_model') to load a new model, that becomes accessible through $this->some_model. Or $this->load->something_else('some_name') which becomes available through $this->some_name.

Here’s a loader class example:

class loader {
    function model($model_name) {
        require('models/'.$model_name.'.php');
        $model = new $model_name;
        // and what to do now, to get it back to the $this var from class foo?
    }
}

But all of this happens only within the scope of the loader class.

Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

Edit:
I know I can assign it directly to a variable, like $this->model_name = $this->load->model('model_name'), but that’s what I’m trying to avoid. I’d like to be able to use this “load” subclass to be able to work within the scope of the class “foo”.

Answer 1

You can use a Singleton, which will allow you to initialize your class objects from another class.

Example:

// Loader will access class singleton and set object
class loader {
    function model($model_name, $class) {
        require('models/'.$model_name.'.php');
        $class::init()->$model_name = new $model_name;
    }
}

// see new singleton methods
class foo {

    private static $instance
    public static function init(){
        if(is_null(self::$instance)){
            $class = __CLASS__;
            self::$instance = new $class;
        }

        return self::$instance;
    }

    function foo() {
        $this->load = new loader;
        $this->some_model = $this->load->model('some_model', __CLASS__);
        $this->some_model->function_from_this_model();
    }
}

// init class like this
foo::init()->foo();