{"id":36805,"date":"2016-11-14T11:04:54","date_gmt":"2016-11-14T16:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tommcfarlin.com\/?p=36805"},"modified":"2016-11-14T11:18:08","modified_gmt":"2016-11-14T16:18:08","slug":"singletons-in-wordpress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tommcfarlin.com\/singletons-in-wordpress\/","title":{"rendered":"Use and Abuse Singletons in WordPress"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those who make a living by creating custom solutions for others using WordPress, you likely have your approach to how you structure the foundation of your typical plugin. And I think that’s a Good Thing\u2122.<\/p>\n

If you’ve read\u00a0any<\/em> of my previous posts, you know that I generally prefer the object-oriented approach to building plugins so there are a number of patterns, common solutions, and architectural decisions that I try to employ from project-to-project.<\/p>\n

I’m not dogmatic about it, though:<\/p>\n

If something new comes along, I’m willing to give it a try. Similarly, if someone I’ve been using for a while is criticized, I’m willing to take a look but that doesn’t mean I’ll change it.<\/p>\n

In short, I need a lot of information to sell my on why I should change something that works, that’s maintainable, and that reads well for other developers.<\/p>\n

And one of the points of discussion that comes up periodically\u00a0is the idea of using Singletons in WordPress development.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Singletons in WordPress<\/h2>\n

I’ve talked about the design pattern<\/a> (and others) in previous posts<\/a>, and I’ve shared how to implement this particular pattern in your work.<\/p>\n

\"Singletons<\/p>\n

Personally, I don’t consider it an antipattern. But there’s a caveat to that:<\/p>\n

I don’t consider it an antipattern when it’s used under very specific circumstances and it’s not used as a way to circumvent better object-oriented principles.<\/p>\n

When any of the above happens,\u00a0we’ve turned it into an antipattern. Secondly, I don’t want to be a person who’s spreading any kind of message that it’s always okay to use singletons in WordPress.<\/p>\n

It’s not. Please don’t do it.<\/p>\n

But as I said earlier, it takes a fair amount of information to change my mind when it comes to\u00a0changing something\u00a0completely<\/em> when I’m not totally sold on the idea there’s a fault with a given topic. And singletons in WordPress is one of those.<\/p>\n

Gary Jones<\/a>, however, a notable object-oriented expert and active WordPress community\u00a0member maintain\u00a0a gist of reasons<\/a>, posts, and third-party resources as to why we should avoid using singletons.<\/p>\n

You can star the gist here<\/a>, but here\u00a0are links to some<\/em> of the articles that I think are worth reading:<\/p>\n