Implementing a Singleton using Traits

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Disclaimer: In no way does this example advocate the use of singletons. Singletons are to be used with a lot of care.

In PHP there is quite a standard way of implementing a singleton:

public class Singleton {
    private $instance;

    private function __construct() { };

    public function getInstance() {
        if (!self::$instance) {
            // new self() is 'basically' equivalent to new Singleton()
            self::$instance = new self();
        }

        return self::$instance;
    }

    // Prevent cloning of the instance
    protected function __clone() { }

    // Prevent serialization of the instance
    protected function __sleep() { }

    // Prevent deserialization of the instance
    protected function __wakeup() { }
}

To prevent code duplication, it is a good idea to extract this behaviour into a trait.

trait SingletonTrait {
    private $instance;

    protected function __construct() { };

    public function getInstance() {
        if (!self::$instance) {
            // new self() will refer to the class that uses the trait
            self::$instance = new self();
        }

        return self::$instance;
    }

    protected function __clone() { }
    protected function __sleep() { }
    protected function __wakeup() { }
}

Now any class that wants to function as a singleton can simply use the trait:

class MyClass {
    use SingletonTrait;
}

// Error! Constructor is not publicly accessible
$myClass = new MyClass();

$myClass = MyClass::getInstance();

// All calls below will fail due to method visibility
$myClassCopy = clone $myClass; // Error!
$serializedMyClass = serialize($myClass); // Error!
$myClass = deserialize($serializedMyclass); // Error!

Even though it is now impossible to serialize a singleton, it is still useful to also disallow the deserialize method.

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

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