Lazy loading dependencies with symfony DI - symfony

Currently I've got a Symfony2 DI container instance ready with a service and all it's dependencies. Lets say for example I have a Car class and it has Engine and Lights as dependencies.
In my current setup both these dependencies are automatically created through setter injection when the Car object is created, but it might very well be that my Car object won't need it's lights this time around thus it doesn't explicitly need to create an instance of this dependency.
Is there a way to achieve this in Symfony DI? Thus only creating an instance of the Lights object when needed? My guess is it'll be some sort of Proxy implementation like Doctrine has but as far as i've seen it doesn't exist in Symfony DI.

Inject the dedendencies that are mandatory through the Constructor via your services.yml, automatically.
If you have optional dependencies inject them through a setter in your Controller when you need them.
$this->container->get('cars')->setLights(new \Namespace\Lights());
Of course your Cars class must be designed like so and you have to direct the injections yourself in your controller, or whereever needed, code.

Question is already answered, but for who needs this functionality, lazy services are implemented in Symfony 2.3.
You need to install the ProxyManager bridge.
You can find official documentation here.

A very interesting question, but I don't think it's possible within Symfony2's Dependency Injection Container. The container is only aware of what you tell it - in this case, you have a dependency that's conditional on a specific use-case. Plus, the registration of services happens early on in the app's life, so I don't see how you could get this to work.
Maybe you should use the Factory pattern. Register a CarFactory as a service, and then when fetching a Car instance, you can specify that it should include a Light dependency.
Can I ask why you want to achieve this? There may be a simpler solution.

It's not a pretty workaround, but you can try injecting the whole DIC, then getting the Light and Engine services when neccessary.
I was thinking about something like this method in the Car class:
protected function getLightService()
{
if (!$this->light) { //so we reuse the first instance
$this->light = $this->dic->get("car.light");
}
return $this->light;
}

Related

Unity DI - C# Dependency Injection how to use with a repository class constructor ? It's only intended for controllers?

i wanna know if it's possible to inject dependency for a class constructor as it is injected for controllers, i have the following cenario as an example:
An AccountController which depends on an AccountRepository like bellow:
public AccountController(IAccountRepository repository)
The dependency is injected perfectly using Unity DI, which have the following configuration:
container.RegisterType<IUserStore<ApplicationUser>, UserStore<ApplicationUser>>(new HierarchicalLifetimeManager(), accountInjectionConstructor);
container.RegisterType<UserManager<ApplicationUser>>(new HierarchicalLifetimeManager());
container.RegisterType<IdentityDbContext<ApplicationUser>, ApplicationDbContext>(new HierarchicalLifetimeManager());
The problem is that i have a class AuthorizationServiceProvider which also needs the AccountRepository... In this case, how would i instantiate or use this AuthorizationServiceProvider class without having to instantiate and provide it all the dependencies?
Provider = new SimpleAuthorizationServerProvider>(),
This provider is set inside the Startup class and called before the Unity DI config initializes...
Here the visual studio complains that there's no argument given that corresponds to the class constructor, but if i provide a new AccountRepository i'd have to provide all it's dependencies as well, (ApplicationDbContext context, UserManager userManager) which are already provided for the Unity DI when creating the controllers....
Could somebody help me please?
Thanks in advance...
how would i instantiate or use this AuthorizationServiceProvider class without having to instantiate and provide it all the dependencies?
You can't. This is actually the core of what we're trying to achieve with Dependency Injection. Your application code should let go of the control over its dependencies. This means that your application code should not create an AuthorizationServiceProvider. Rather, it should let a third-party provide this dependency. Typically, this means you require the dependency be supplied using Constructor Injection.
Letting application code create these dependencies itself causes problems, typically referred to as the Control Freak anti-pattern or Dependency Inversion Principle violation. It causes strong coupling, which can hinder maintainability.
When working with Dependency Injection, this third-party is called the Composition Root. The Composition Root is:
a (preferably) unique location in an application where modules are composed together.
With DI, only the Composition Root will create graphs of objects. You are using Unity, which is a DI Container. The DI Container acts as the Composer, which is part of your Composition Root.
Instead of using a DI Container, you can build the object graphs by hand, which means you will have to create a complete tree of dependencies at once. This practice is called Pure DI. Still, the Composition Root is the location where those object graphs are created; with or without a DI Container.
Your view of DI might be troubled by the use of the standard Identity template that Visual Studio provides. From a design and DI perspective, however, this template is horrifying.
Either way, all these stated concepts, patterns and anti-patterns are described quite thoroughly in the book Dependency Injection in .NET by Mark Seemann.

How can I get the Doctrine entity metadata before compiling Symfony container?

In one Symfony bundle I define a compiler pass to preprocess some configuration. Part of that config is based on Doctrine entities, so I need to get the full metadata information for all application entities.
The compiler pass is executed very late (PassConfig::TYPE_BEFORE_REMOVING). I'm using $container->get('doctrine') like this to get the entity metadata:
$em = $container->get('doctrine')->getManagerForClass($entityClass);
$entityMetadata = $em->getMetadataFactory()->getMetadataFor($entityClass);
However, this is causing random failures for some users because of the use of the doctrine service during the Symfony container compilation.
I'd recommend to change your entities addressing. Mainly - create your models with interfaces and make entities implementing them.
Using resolve_target_entities Doctrine will "convert" them to the particular classes.
An example code is here: https://github.com/Sylius/SyliusResourceBundle/blob/master/DependencyInjection/Compiler/DoctrineTargetEntitiesResolverPass.php
Just make sure your bundle is registered before DoctrineBundle is registered.
Then - in your whole app - instead of AppBundle::Entity addressing, use FQDN of interface bound to an entity earlier.
I've experimented a bit with compilers and services and it's a very bad idea to base on cross-bundle services under compiling container process... Why? It's not reliable - sometimes it will work as you want, sometimes it will fail as you described.
Thank you all for your comments and ideas. I post an answer to explain how I solved this problem.
Trying to use the Doctrine service in a compiler pass was creating more and more problems for our users (and it was creating other minor issues with other services such as Twig). So this was definitely a bad solution for our needs.
So at the end I decided to change everything. We no longer use a compiler pass to process the configuration and instead we use a regular PHP class called during runtime.
In the dev environment, the configuration is processed for each request. It's a bit slower than before, but we prevent any caching issue. In the prod environment we use Doctrine Cache to process the configuration once. Besides, we've create a cache warmer to create the cached configuration before the first request hits the application.

Does Unity have Autofac's equivilent of Owned<> to force new instance to be created

The project I'm on requires we use Unity. The lifetime managers are correctly set so this is not an issue with setting a lifetime manager. We have a special case where I need to resolve a service but it needs to freshly resolve every dependency as if it was the original request. In Autofac I can do this by injecting an Owned. Does Unity support anything like that or is there a way I can call Resolve and get a fresh set of injections?
Unity doesn't have equivalent of Autofac's Owned<> feature.
As for your problem, I think factories could solve it. You can write your own factory or use Unity Automatic Factories feature. More info on msdn.
I ended up using a Marker interface and registering that interface with a different scope. Then when I must have a new instance and not a shared instance I use the other interface.

Silex - real DI vs injecting $app which looks like ServiceLocator?

I read the article yesterday: https://igor.io/2012/11/09/scaling-silex.html
And another one http://davedevelopment.co.uk/2012/10/03/Silex-Controllers-As-Services.html
So a conceptual question rised in my head:
Currently I do have a lot of controllers in separate classes. I overwrite controller_resolver to create a controller class instance and inject $app into contoller's constructor.
I define routes like this $app->get('/hello', 'HelloController::indexAction') <- my controller resolver will create new HelloController($app); - so far so good.
But to be honest it became a ServiceLocator pattern, not a DependencyInjection, because I do inject whe whole $app which looks like ServiceLocator usage.
Now I am in doubt: should I leave it as is (because it works well) or try "controllers as services" to inject only those sevices on which my controller really depends on? May be my SeviceLocator approach will hit me some day? (people say that DI is better for tests).
I have also looked into Symfony Framework Bundle: class Controller extends abstract class ContainerAware which also have the whole $container injected! ServiceLocator approach in full stack framework?
Any recomendation? Pros/cons?
The symfony2 full-stack framework
The framework uses the Dependency Injection pattern and not the Service Locator pattern.
All controllers aren't services by default. The ContainerAware class includes methods to get access to the service container, so you can call Services inside the Controller.
If you are going to use a Controller as a Service you need to remove the Controller extend. All dependencies you want to use inside the controller needs to be injected by the Service Container.
Read more about this in a blogpost by richard miller, one of the core contributors of Symfony2.
The Silex micro-framework
The Silex micro-framework provides the bare bones of a framework, it's up to you how the architecture looks and which patterns you use.
The Silex documentation uses Controllers that aren't Services. It injects the complete Service Container inside very Controller:
$app->post('/post/{id}-{slug}', function($id, $slug) use ($app) {
// ...
});
If you want to use controllers as service, you should only inject the services you want to use inside the controller.
EDIT: The Controller::action syntax refers also to a Controller that isn't a Service. The Controller:action notation is used to refer to Controllers as Services.
There's lot's of personal preference involved here. What you've done already is a good (enough) step to organising your code base. Some people like myself take things a step further and move our controllers to the container, rather than injecting it in to some kind of BaseController. This happens in both Silex and the full stack Symfony framework.
My advice would be to leave everything you have as is, then try defining your next controller as a service, by practising BDD.
For example, the behaviour of a UserController view action:
It should retrieve the user from a database
It should render the user with a template
Not once does it mention retrieving the database or the template renderer from a container. I'm comfortable not injecting the container, so I'll only inject what I'm led to believe I need by BDD.

Symfony2 where to place custom helper classes

I'm starting with a Symfony2 project. I know the framework basics but I have a question:
Where is the right place to pot those helper classes I create for help or for the business logic?
Max's answer is correct. However I question the path he recommends for your code.
The following classes and files have specific emplacements:
Service Container Extensions (belong in) DependencyInjection/
from http://symfony.com/doc/current/cookbook/bundles/best_practices.html
That says your Services should be placed in a folder called 'DependencyInjection', not 'Services'. In full, it should be src/Foo/BarBundle/DependencyInjection
I say this as someone that had the former and has just finished moving them all to the latter (!)
What #Adam says is wrong, you have to store your Dependency Injection Extensions in DependecyInjection directory, not the services itself. In the documentation says that you can store your (custom) business logic classes in any place you like.
http://symfony.com/doc/current/best_practices/business-logic.html
The best way to keep the business logic is create service to handle all the logic. So it will be in:
src/Foo/BarBundle/Service
and you need to call the service in the services.yml.
I recently did some small work on an existing Symfony2 project. As described by answer from Tuong Le, I created my Helper classes under the Helper directory of the bundle and class name with Helper suffix i.e. the helper class is located at:
src/MyBundle/Helper/MyUtilHelper.php
I can use MyUtilHelper class in my bundle without calling the service container i.e. I didn't need to call.
$container->get('my_util');
I don't really know whether there is some special config. in my setup; someone already got it setup and I was just adding new functionality.
You can create the custom classes under your Bundle, such as under a folder Helper/..
However, to use those helper in your code, you'll need to define those Helper(s) in your service description file (such as services.xml)... Then you can use $container->get('your_helper')->
According to official documentation - in particular - Symfony Best Practices - you should store your services in Utils folder under the src. I belive, that this is correct way regardless of whether you want or don't wont to make the functionality provided by services of your bundle available to other parts of application via Service Container. Furthermore, you can store helper classes in any place you consider suitable. Concerning #Adam Knowles and #PachinSV answers - they are not quite right because they do not answer your question - "Where is the right place to pot those helper classes I create for help or for the business logic?" or "Where to store classes which I want to register and use via Service Container" - but not where to put bundle Extension class - which main purpose is to provide information about configuration which should be automatically loaded from your bundle to apps Service Container during the process of booting the Kernel.

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