How do I make 15 static PHP classes work together well?

Question

I have a personal PHP application that has about 15 classes. Each class is only initiated once as a page is executed. In other words, when the page loads:

• 15 classes are loaded, and as each class file gets loaded, I create one instance of the class.
• The application (so far) is designed so every variable in the system has one state during the generation of a page. I use global vars to access each of these
• It's worked fine for 3 years, but I am the sole developer and a goo debugger of my own code.

I have heard all the issues with Singletons, and I hate doing, "global $var" all over the place. Please tell me how to pull this type of structure out and into something developers would love. I want to write software the right way, but I can't seem to find a very simple code framework for this type of execution.

Oh - and I'm not looking for a MVC framework solution. I would love your thoughts on how I take 15 classes and turn them into a proper framework for working together. I would also love an articulation on how "stupid" it is to develop this way.

Answer 1

If you have variables you want all classes to have access to, maybe you could try inheritance, for example something like

class Settings
{
    var $page_name = "My Page";
    var $database_name = "my_db";
}

and then let all classes inherit this class like

class Page extends Settings
{
    var $id = 0;
    var $template = "";
    function __construct() {}
}

$page = new Page();
echo $page->page_name;

or you could define the values as constants, if that is what they are

define("PAGE_NAME", "My Page");

you would have access to PAGE_NAME everywhere

I'm not in any way saying this is the right way, it's just a way. :)

Answer 2

I ran into the same issue when I was developing php apps. What I ended up doing was creating classes of static methods and static variables. In essence they work somewhat like namespaces. I am not sure how "standard" this is but it works very well in practice.

The only other option would be to create a singleton like you mentioned in your question, but imho that can be overkill unless you need something like constructors and deconstructors.

Example:

<?php
class MyClass{
    private static $my_static_variable;

    static public function myStaticMethod(){
        return self::$my_static_variable;
    }
}

You can then use this anywhere without the need to use global:

function foo(){
    MyClass::myStaticMethod();
}

class Bar{
    public function myBarMethod(){
        MyClass::myStaticMethod();
    }
}