PHP Front Controller implementation without singleton : conceptual question

Question

i have a "conceptual" question about Front controller implementation in php.

Most of the Front Controllers i have seen around are implemented with Singleton, i am not a big fan of singleton pattern and i created a Container which has a static property that will store a unic instance of Front Controller.

With singleton, i had to put initialization code inside the constructor (or a method called by the constructor):

$fc = FrontController::getInstance();

With the container i could put configuration outside the FrontController, that was my goal and i still have a simple way to retrieve the FrontController.

$fc = Container->getFrontController();

This code looks much cleaner to me and i can get clean subclassing without caring about parent constructors.

That's quite the same thing at 'bootstrap' time, but in practice the difference from my previous implementation is that now i can create FrontControllers anywhere in the application (inside a DAO or inside a Action), because the constructor is no longer private/protected.

My question is: Is it a 'bad practice' to give to the user of my classes the possibility to create FrontController instances anywhere in the app? I would write documentation and deliver the container with other classes, but i still wonder if i should prevent strange uses.

Answer 1

Is there any real reason to create FrontController instances inside the app? If there is then go ahead. Otherwise I am a bit skeptical about this as it may complicate things later on. What I'm afraid of is someone using new FrontController instances when there is a much simpler way, either out of laziness or because they don't know any better. Once they find something that works, some people tend to keep doing it even if there's a better way. Never forget that you may have to work with people that are not as good as you.

Personally I would hide this or not allow it altogether. However I would keep it in mind for later releases. If you ever stumble on a case where it's the best option by all means add it to your "official" interface.

Don't forget that once you release a function into the wild, it's excruciatingly difficult to kill it off.