Global or Singleton for database connection?

Question

What is the benefit of using singleton instead of global for database connections in PHP? I feel using singleton instead of global makes the code unnecessarily complex.

Code with Global

$conn = new PDO(...);

function getSomething()
{
    global $conn;
    .
    .
    .
}

Code with Singleton

class DB_Instance
{
    private static $db;

    public static function getDBO()
    {
        if (!self::$db)
            self::$db = new PDO(...);

        return self::$db;
    }
}

function getSomething()
{
    $conn = DB_Instance::getDBO();
    .
    .
    .
}

If there's a better way of initializing database connection other than global or singleton, please mention it and describe the advantages it have over global or singleton.

Answer 1

I know this is old, but Dr8k's answer was almost there.

When you are considering writing a piece of code, assume it's going to change. That doesn't mean that you're assuming the kinds of changes it will have hoisted upon it at some point in the future, but rather that some form of change will be made.

Make it a goal mitigate the pain of making changes in the future: a global is dangerous because it's hard to manage in a single spot. What if I want to make that database connection context aware in the future? What if I want it to close and reopen itself every 5th time it was used. What if I decide that in the interest of scaling my app I want to use a pool of 10 connections? Or a configurable number of connections?

A singleton factory gives you that flexibility. I set it up with very little extra complexity and gain more than just access to the same connection; I gain the ability to change how that connection is passed to me later on in a simple manner.

Note that I say singleton factory as opposed to simply singleton. There's precious little difference between a singleton and a global, true. And because of that, there's no reason to have a singleton connection: why would you spend the time setting that up when you could create a regular global instead?

What a factory gets you is a why to get connections, and a separate spot to decide what connections (or connection) you're going to get.

Example

class ConnectionFactory
{
    private static $factory;
    private $db;

    public static function getFactory()
    {
        if (!self::$factory)
            self::$factory = new ConnectionFactory(...);
        return self::$factory;
    }

    public function getConnection() {
        if (!$this->db)
            $this->db = new PDO(...);
        return $this->db;
    }
}

function getSomething()
{
    $conn = ConnectionFactory::getFactory()->getConnection();
    .
    .
    .
}

Then, in 6 months when your app is super famous and getting dugg and slashdotted and you decide you need more than a single connection, all you have to do is implement some pooling in the getConnection() method. Or if you decide that you want a wrapper that implements SQL logging, you can pass a PDO subclass. Or if you decide you want a new connection on every invocation, you can do do that. It's flexible, instead of rigid.

16 lines of code, including braces, which will save you hours and hours and hours of refactoring to something eerily similar down the line.

Note that I don't consider this "Feature Creep" because I'm not doing any feature implementation in the first go round. It's border line "Future Creep", but at some point, the idea that "coding for tomorrow today" is always a bad thing doesn't jive for me.

Answer 2

I'm not sure I can answer your specific question, but wanted to suggest that global / singleton connection objects may not be the best idea if this if for a web-based system. DBMSs are generally designed to manage large numbers of unique connections in an efficient manner. If you are using a global connection object, then you are doing a couple of things:

1. Forcing you pages to do all database connections sequentially and killing any attempts at asyncronous page loads.

2. Potentially holding open locks on database elements longer than necessary, slowing down overall database performance.

3. Maxing out the total number of simultaneous connections your database can support and blocking new users from accessing the resources.

I am sure there are other potential consequences as well. Remember, this method will attempt to sustain a database connection for every user accessing the site. If you only have one or two users, not a problem. If this is a public website and you want traffic then scalability will become an issue.

[EDIT]

In larger scaled situations, creating new connections everytime you hit the datase can be bad. However, the answer is not to create a global connection and reuse it for everything. The answer is connection pooling.

With connection pooling, a number of distinct connections are maintained. When a connection is required by the application the first available connection from the pool is retrieved and then returned to the pool once its job is done. If a connection is requested and none are available one of two things will happen: a) if the maximum number of allowed connection is not reached, a new connection is opened, or b) the application is forced to wait for a connection to become available.

Note: In .Net languages, connection pooling is handled by the ADO.Net objects by default (the connection string sets all the required information).

Thanks to Crad for commenting on this.

Answer 3

The singleton method was created to make sure there was only one instance of any class. But, because people use it as a way to shortcut globalizing, it becomes known as lazy and/or bad programming.

Therefore, I would ignore global and Singleton since both are not really OOP.

What you were looking for is dependency injection.

You can check on easy to read PHP based information related to dependency injection (with examples) at http://components.symfony-project.org/dependency-injection/trunk/book/01-Dependency-Injection

Answer 4

Both patterns achieve the same net effect, providing one single access point for your database calls.

In terms of specific implementation, the singleton has a small advantage of not initiating a database connection until at least one of your other methods requests it. In practice in most applications I've written, this doesn't make much of a difference, but it's a potential advantage if you have some pages/execution paths which don't make any database calls at all, since those pages won't ever request a connection to the database.

One other minor difference is that the global implementation may trample over other variable names in the application unintentionally. It's unlikely that you'll ever accidentally declare another global $db reference, though it's possible that you could overwrite it accidentally ( say, you write if($db = null) when you meant to write if($db == null). The singleton object prevents that.

Answer 5

If you're not going to use a persistent connection, and there are cases for not doing that, I find a singleton to be conceptually more palatable than a global in OO design.

In a true OO architecture, a singleton is more effective than creating a new instance the object each time.

Answer 6

On the given example, I see no reason to use singletons. As a rule of thumb if my only concern is to allow a single instance of an object, if the language allows it, I prefer to use globals

Answer 7

In general I would use a singleton for a database connection... You don't want to create a new connection everytime you need to interact to the database... This might hurt perfomance and bandwidth of your network... Why create a new one, when there's one available... Just my 2 cents...

RWendi

Answer 8

It is quite simple. Never use global OR Singleton.

Answer 9

As advice both singleton and global are valid and can be joined within the same system, project, plugin, product, etc ... In my case, I make digital products for web (plugin).

I use only singleton in the main class and I use it by principle. I almost do not use it because I know that the main class will not instantiate it again

<?php // file0.php

final class Main_Class
{
    private static $instance;
    private $time;

    private final function __construct()
    {
        $this->time = 0;
    }
    public final static function getInstance() : self
    {
        if (self::$instance instanceof self) {
            return self::$instance;
        }

        return self::$instance = new self();
    }
    public final function __clone()
    {
        throw new LogicException("Cloning timer is prohibited");
    }
    public final function __sleep()
    {
        throw new LogicException("Serializing timer is prohibited");
    }
    public final function __wakeup()
    {
        throw new LogicException("UnSerializing timer is prohibited");
    }
}

Global use for almost all the secondary classes, example:

<?php // file1.php
global $YUZO;
$YUZO = new YUZO; // YUZO is name class

while at runtime I can use Global to call their methods and attributes in the same instance because I do not need another instance of my main product class.

<?php // file2.php
global $YUZO;
$YUZO->method1()->run();
$YUZO->method2( 'parameter' )->html()->print();

I get with the global is to use the same instance to be able to make the product work because I do not need a factory for instances of the same class, usually the instance factory is for large systems or for very rare purposes.

In conclusion:, you must if you already understand well that is the anti-pattern Singleton and understand the Global, you can use one of the 2 options or mix them but if I recommend not to abuse since there are many programmers who are very exception and faithful to the programming OOP, use it for main and secondary classes that you use a lot within the execution time. (It saves you a lot of CPU).