FuelPHP Forums

Thanks. Once again, great framework..

Not sure what you mean. Normally, you have a base class that uses one more drivers. The base class can have a static _init() method, which is called when the class is loaded by the autoloader. If you want you can use that to load a (default) driver, create an instance, etc. This way you don't load the driver and create the instance before the base class is loaded, so only when you now you're going to need it. You have have a peek at for example the Session or Cache class, which do something similar.

It's difficult to answer without knowing what the code looks like. For classes with a single driver instance, you would do something like

class Baseclass
{
    protected static $instance = null;

    public static function _init()
    {
        // load your class driver here
        $driver = 'Driver_Class_Name';

        static::$instance = new $driver;
    }

    public static function classmethod()
    {
        return static::$instance->drivermethod();
    }
}

Classes with multiple instances use a factory() method to generate and return the instance, and optionally an instance() method to return a previously instantiated driver object.