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php

custom superglobals

php.internals

Ron Korving

21 years ago

Hi,

Wouldn't it be a good feature to have users create their own superglobals? I
think it would be good for at least two reasons (rather similar though):

- Application settings can be stored in such a global, so that objects can
use them without needing the information passed to functions or using the
rather ugly "global" statement.

- A singleton constructor could use it to grab information. Normally, in my
own database abstraction layer, I would create the database object and pass
the constructor information on where to connect. I don't want to implement
my DB class to open a file to read connection information and I don't want
it to use the "global" statement. This presents a problem if I want it to be
a singleton object, because I'd need the information everytime I call
getInstance() which is of course not really an option. Personally, I don't
consider using a superglobal from within the constructor an ugly practice.

Ron

Sean Coates

21 years ago

Ron Korving wrote:

> Wouldn't it be a good feature to have users create their own superglobals?

I realize that you're probably talking about creating custom
superglobals in the PHP core, but you might want to look at Sara's
Runkit project (in PECL). It allows custom superglobals.

http://pecl.php.net/runkit
(beware the segfaults (-; )

S

Rasmus Lerdorf

21 years ago

Ron Korving wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Wouldn't it be a good feature to have users create their own superglobals? I
> think it would be good for at least two reasons (rather similar though):
>
> - Application settings can be stored in such a global, so that objects can
> use them without needing the information passed to functions or using the
> rather ugly "global" statement.
>
> - A singleton constructor could use it to grab information. Normally, in my
> own database abstraction layer, I would create the database object and pass
> the constructor information on where to connect. I don't want to implement
> my DB class to open a file to read connection information and I don't want
> it to use the "global" statement. This presents a problem if I want it to be
> a singleton object, because I'd need the information everytime I call
> getInstance() which is of course not really an option. Personally, I don't
> consider using a superglobal from within the constructor an ugly practice.

That's what $GLOBALS is for.

-Rasmus