How to make an object resident to a function call? - php

Question

I have a PHP program I'm writing that does a SOAP request, and it returns an Object. I need to write a function where it takes the data from this Object and uses it in various ways, but I don't want it to do a SOAP request each time if the SOAP request for the data in this Object is already resident.
Pseudo-code example:
$price = GetPartPrice("1234");
function GetPartPrice($part_number) {
If Parts_List_Object not found then do SOAP request to get Parts_List_Object.
}
The problem I see is that I don't know where or how to store if the Parts_List_Object is already there. Do I need to set something up to make the StdClass object that gets requested from the SOAP/JSON request global or is there a better method to do all this? Thanks!

Answer 1

One method would be to build a registry of these objects where you store the ones you fetch and look up the ones you need. That allows you to simply grab a reference to the instance that you've already loaded. A very basic example:
class PartListRegistry {
private static $list = array();
// After you do the SOAP request, call this to save a reference to the object
public static function addPartObject($key, $obj) {
self::$list[$key] = $obj;
}
// Call this to see if the object exists already
public static function getPartObject($key) {
if (isset(self::$list[$key])) {
return self::$list[$key];
}
return null;
}
}
function GetPartPrice($part_number) {
$part = PartListRegistry::getPartObject($part_number);
if ($part === null) {
$part = .... // Do your SOAP request here
// Save a reference to the object when you're done
PartListregistry::addPartObject($part_num, $part);
}
// Do your stuff with the part ....
}