On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 3:40 PM, Paul Halliday <paul.halliday@xxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> Say you have 10 or so scripts and a single config file. If you have
> main.php, functions1.php, functions2.php, functions3.php..
>
> Does is hurt to do an include of the config file in each separate
> script, even if you only need a few things from it, or should you
> just specify what you want with a 'global' within each
> script/function?
>
touching on what Nicholas said this could be handled in OOP via the
singleton pattern, however there are ways of dealing w/ it in global
function land as well.
i see 4 immediate options
. load config from each file (performance hit mitigated if config is a php
array and using opcode caching)
. global variable
. session storage
. config fetching function w/ static variable
the last option is the one i'd like to describe since i think its the
cleanest, even if you have opcode caching enabled. the function would look
something like this
function load_config()
{
static $cachedConfig = null;
if($cachedConfig !== null)
{
// load file and store value(s) in $cachedConfig
}
return $cachedConfig;
}
now all you have to do is make load_config() available in all your files,
via something like require_once on the file which defines load_config().
the result is the configuration will only be read once on a given page
load, thereafter its contents will come from memory.
this is actually very similar to the singleton approach in OOP.
-nathan
