Does PHP do any kind of caching of objects on it's own? If you construct something once, then construct the same exact thing again later, does PHP reconstruct it a second time, or just use the firstly already constructed object, because they're identical objects.

they are not identical objects, they are different objects that happen to have same values

ok thanks for clarifying that

Which leads me to my next question. Do you think it's a bad idea to store objects in the DB?

yes

Even with instanceof checks?

yes

@MichaelEcklund it's a security risk

it’s a mess for starters, but that too :)

So I should probably reanalyze my architecture then. I'm going to have lotta duplicated objects with this approach.

deserialising PHP objects can cause code execution, their constructors and wakeup methods run, by the time you get to an instanceof check, it's already happened

if you need same-ish object a lot then reuse a single instance and make it immutable, so that you don't screw it up over runtime

I've been trying to not use the WP way and global stuff everywhere.

who said anything about globals? :)

I used to create the object once, then global the variable where needed.

@MichaelEcklund why are you storing objects in the DB to begin with? What problem does it solve and what type of objects are you storing

you need better place to keep your stuff then, see Dependency Injection Containers and so on

or plain old dependency injection

true, but I find that DI container helps keep things in order on WP extension-level

as above, helps with where to keep stuff

I've got the object available and ready at a certain event hook. The problem I've been facing is getting it to the functions which need it. I don't want to be passing variables from a() -> b() -> c() -> d(), etc. Just seems messy. My way around it was to make a getter function to retrieve the object. I can get it when needed and not have to pass it from function to function in a chain like approach.

That's why I was storing it in DB, but now I'm having second thoughts

Let me tell you it was so much easier doing it the "WP way". Create the object once, then just global it everywhere.

such thinking keeps me in business

Trying to keep my plugins isolated in respective namespaces.

but as always thanks for the advice guys. :)