I personnaly create a new instance of PDO like this :
$dbDatas = parse_ini_file( DB_FILE );
$dbOptions = [
\PDO::ATTR_DEFAULT_FECTH_MODE => \PDO::FETCH_OBJ,
\PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE => \PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION
];
$dsn = sprintf( 'mysql:dbname=%s;host=%s', $dbDatas['dbname'],
$dbDatas['host'] );
$this->cn = new \PDO( $dsn, $dbDatas['user'], $dbDatas['password'],
$dbOptions );
$this->cn->exec( 'SET CHARACTER SET UTF8' );