Initializing "global" system objects

Thank you trq.

IoC is definitely the way to go and Service Providers might be the right mechanism for what I need.

I think I have a situation that is a bit more complex. Consider a new class called ContextService that provides encapsulation for a set of properties:

<?php

/**
 * provides information on the current application context
 */
class ContextService extends BaseService
{
    const ENV_WEB = 1;
    const ENV_TESTING = 2;
    const ENV_COMMAND_LINE = 3;

    /** @var int */
    private $userId;

    /** @var int */
    private $accountId;

    /** @var string */
    private $languageCode;

    /** @var int */
    private $environment;

    /**
     * @param int $accountId
     */
    public function setAccountId($accountId)
    {
        $this->accountId = $accountId;
    }

    /**
     * @return int
     */
    public function getAccountId()
    {
        return $this->accountId;
    }

    /**
     * @param int $environment
     */
    public function setEnvironment($environment)
    {
        $this->environment = $environment;
    }

    /**
     * @return int
     */
    public function getEnvironment()
    {
        return $this->environment;
    }

    /**
     * @param string $languageCode
     */
    public function setLanguageCode($languageCode)
    {
        $this->languageCode = $languageCode;
    }

    /**
     * @return string
     */
    public function getLanguageCode()
    {
        return $this->languageCode;
    }

    /**
     * @param int $userId
     */
    public function setUserId($userId)
    {
        $this->userId = $userId;
    }

    /**
     * @return int
     */
    public function getUserId()
    {
        return $this->userId;
    }
}

The class should be configured based on the current context. For example:

$userId should hold the value of the currently-logged in user
$accountId should hold a numeric value that is extracted from the URL in the current request
$languageCode should be set based on the subdomain in the current URL request
$environment should may have a value based on the context in which the object was set (web access, cron-job, etc...)

There can be only one object of type ContextService so I thought I would use:

App::instance('context', $context);

The question is where do I create the $context object? I might need to initialize it in the route before filter and set the $accountId, $languageCode and $environment there. The $userId property might be set once the user is authenticated.

Do I perform the actual object creation in a Service Provider class and if so, will I have access to the request properties (subdomain, parameters, etc...)?

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