Global Object

JNettles

I have a file that is like a library for all of my classes, RegistryDB.php. I also have a configuration file, config.ini, that I load at the top of RegistryDB.php into an object called "rdb_config" that I instantiate right at the start of the script.

Shouldn't I be able to access "rdb_config" inside each of these separate classes, since I declared it at the top of the script and not inside any particular class? Or if I can't, what's a good methodology for making "rdb_config" available to each of these classes in my library without having to load config.ini everytime I instantiate a new class?

Example-

<?php
$rdb_config = new Configuration(); //loads the .ini file and assigns values to object properties, that all works fine

class jRegistryUser
{
       function showUser()
       {
              echo $rdb_config->USER;   //nothing shows up!
       }
}

Is this not valid? How do I go about setting this up?

NogDog

The two techniques I'd probably consider are either passing the config object as a parameter to the class's constructor, or possibly using the Singleton pattern if the config object needs to be used in many different classes at various depths into the object hierarchy.

Pass as parameter:

class jRegistryUser
{
   private $rdb_config;

   function __construct(Configuration $cfg)
   {
      $this->rdb_config = $cfg;
   }

   function showUser()
   {
      echo $this->rdb_config->USER;   //nothing shows up!
   }
}

// sample usage:

$rdb_config = new Configuration();

$example = new jRegistryUser($rdb_config);

If you want to look into the Singleton pattern, see the manual entry, then google on something like "why singletons are evil" to decide if the pros outweigh the cons.