What are the best practices for making database connections available globally in a PHP application?

When developing a PHP application, it is often necessary to establish a database connection that can be accessed globally across different files and functions. One common approach to achieve this is by using a singleton pattern to create a single instance of the database connection that can be reused throughout the application. 

class Database {
    private static $instance = null;
    private $connection;

    private function __construct() {
        // Establish database connection
        $this->connection = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password');
    }

    public static function getInstance() {
        if (self::$instance == null) {
            self::$instance = new Database();
        }
        return self::$instance;
    }

    public function getConnection() {
        return $this->connection;
    }
}

// To use the database connection globally
$database = Database::getInstance();
$connection = $database->getConnection();

Keywords

PHP database connection global singleton pattern PDO

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