Class connection properties

PHP
1

What is the best way to define connection properties for a database in a class

I have a class which connects to a database. In that class I have my public properties defined and use them within my connect method (actually using my constructor for this).

I have seen examples where these values are passed in when the object is created or are held in a config file and included. I have read that defining these properties in the class itself makes the class less abstract and extendible

What is the best way?

2

If you mean DB connection parameters like login, password, database name used, host and port then I prefer to define them in a separate configuration file (.php file of course) placed in a folder not accessible from the web directly (as well as other .php files intended for inclusion).

Having a separate .php configuration file is a quite common thing. E.g. this is how it is done in OSCommerce, X-Cart and many other known solutions.

This helps to configure the system pretty quickly if configuration is ever done not by you but by some other programmer.

3

so with this setup …

include/class.php

application.php

configuration.php

my configuration.php holds the parameters and i include this into my application.php

I now have access to my parameter variables within application.php so do i pass these in as arguments to my class on my connection method call

4 

// how you deal with configuration is a whole story on its own
$config['dsn'] = 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=yourdb';
$config['username'] = 'root';
$config['password'] = 'secret';

// but look! a database instance - why do you need to wrap it?
$db = new PDO($config['dsn'], $config['username'], $config['password'])
5

thanks guys