Introducing the Flyweight Pattern with PHP 5

Naturally, if you already read the title of this series, then you’ll know that I’m speaking specifically of the flyweight pattern. But before I go into further explanations, let me tell you briefly how this pattern works. This will give you a better idea of how and when it can be used.

In simple terms, when the flyweight pattern is applied, it’s possible to specify programmatically that a particular class is going to have only a predefined number of instances, which are shared within the same implementation. This simple concept itself introduces an immediate benefit: it prevents unnecessary instantiations of the class in question across the same application, which results in a noticeable improvement in the performance of certain systems that must work with heavy loads.

Certainly, if you reread the above definition, it’s clear to see that a flyweight class can be considered a straightforward approach to keep the creation of objects carefully balanced. This can improve the web server’s overall performance, as I mentioned a few lines above.

Nonetheless, this series isn’t limited to introducing boring theory on how the flyweight pattern works. You'll have the chance to learn and test many practical examples related to the referenced pattern, so you can quickly start applying it in your own PHP applications.

A final note before I proceed further: all the examples that you’ll see here will be developed with PHP 5, but they can be easily modified to work with PHP4 as well.

Having clarified that point, let’s find out together how to implement flyweight classes with PHP. It’s going to be instructive and fun!