Get all instances of a class in PHP

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If you derive all your objects from a TrackableObject class, this class could be set up to handle such things (just be sure you call parent::__construct() and parent::__destruct() when overloading those in subclasses.

class TrackableObject
{
    protected static $_instances = array();

    public function __construct()
    {
        self::$_instances[] = $this;
    }

    public function __destruct()
    {
        unset(self::$_instances[array_search($this, self::$_instances, true)]);
    }

    /**
     * @param $includeSubclasses Optionally include subclasses in returned set
     * @returns array array of objects
     */
    public static function getInstances($includeSubclasses = false)
    {
        $return = array();
        foreach(self::$_instances as $instance) {
            if ($instance instanceof get_class($this)) {
                if ($includeSubclasses || (get_class($instance) === get_class($this)) {
                    $return[] = $instance;
                }
            }
        }
        return $return;
    }
}

The major issue with this is that no object would be automatically picked up by garbage collection (as a reference to it still exists within TrackableObject::$_instances), so __destruct() would need to be called manually to destroy said object. (Circular Reference Garbage Collection was added in PHP 5.3 and may present additional garbage collection opportunities)

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