This document is for CakePHP's development version, which can be significantly different from previous releases.
You may want to read current stable release documentation instead.

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Dependency Injection

The CakePHP service container enables you to manage class dependencies for your application services through dependency injection. Dependency injection automatically “injects” an object’s dependencies via the constructor without having to manually instantiate them.

You can use the service container to define ‘application services’. These classes can use models and interact with other objects like loggers and mailers to build re-usable workflows and business logic for your application.

CakePHP will use the DI container in the following situations:

  • Constructing controllers.

  • Calling actions on your controllers.

  • Constructing Console Commands.

  • Constructing Middleware by classname.

A short example would be:

// In src/Controller/UsersController.php
class UsersController extends AppController
{
    // The $users service will be created via the service container.
    public function ssoCallback(UsersService $users)
    {
        if ($this->request->is('post')) {
            // Use the UsersService to create/get the user from a
            // Single Signon Provider.
            $user = $users->ensureExists($this->request->getData());
        }
    }
}

// In src/Application.php
public function services(ContainerInterface $container): void
{
    $container->add(UsersService::class);
}

In this example, the UsersController::ssoCallback() action needs to fetch a user from a Single-Sign-On provider and ensure it exists in the local database. Because this service is injected into our controller, we can easily swap the implementation out with a mock object or a dummy sub-class when testing.

Here is an example of an injected service inside a command:

// In src/Command/CheckUsersCommand.php
class CheckUsersCommand extends Command
{
    /** @var UsersService */
    public $users;

    public function __construct(UsersService $users)
    {
        parent::__construct();
        $this->users = $users;
    }

    public function execute(Arguments $args, ConsoleIo $io)
    {
        $valid = $this->users->check('all');
    }

}

// In src/Application.php
public function services(ContainerInterface $container): void
{
    $container
        ->add(CheckUsersCommand::class)
        ->addArgument(UsersService::class);
    $container->add(UsersService::class);
}

The injection process is a bit different here. Instead of adding the UsersService to the container we first have to add the Command as a whole to the Container and add the UsersService as an argument. With that you can then access that service inside the constructor of the command.

Adding Services

In order to have services created by the container, you need to tell it which classes it can create and how to build those classes. The simplest definition is via a class name:

// Add a class by its name.
$container->add(BillingService::class);

Your application and plugins define the services they have in the services() hook method:

// in src/Application.php
namespace App;

use App\Service\BillingService;
use Cake\Core\ContainerInterface;
use Cake\Http\BaseApplication;

class Application extends BaseApplication
{
    public function services(ContainerInterface $container): void
    {
        $container->add(BillingService::class);
    }
}

You can define implementations for interfaces that your application uses:

use App\Service\AuditLogServiceInterface;
use App\Service\AuditLogService;

// in your Application::services() method.

// Add an implementation for an interface.
$container->add(AuditLogServiceInterface::class, AuditLogService::class);

The container can leverage factory functions to create objects if necessary:

$container->add(AuditLogServiceInterface::class, function (...$args) {
    return new AuditLogService(...$args);
});

Factory functions will receive all of the resolved dependencies for the class as arguments.

Once you’ve defined a class, you also need to define the dependencies it requires. Those dependencies can be either objects or primitive values:

// Add a primitive value like a string, array or number.
$container->add('apiKey', 'abc123');

$container->add(BillingService::class)
    ->addArgument('apiKey');

Your services can depend on ServerRequest in controller actions as it will be added automatically.

Changed in version 4.4.0: The $request is registered automatically now.

Adding Shared Services

By default services are not shared. Every object (and dependencies) is created each time it is fetched from the container. If you want to re-use a single instance, often referred to as a singleton, you can mark a service as ‘shared’:

// in your Application::services() method.

$container->addShared(BillingService::class);

Extending Definitions

Once a service is defined you can modify or update the service definition by extending them. This allows you to add additional arguments to services defined elsewhere:

// Add an argument to a partially defined service elsewhere.
$container->extend(BillingService::class)
    ->addArgument('logLevel');

Tagging Services

By tagging services you can get have all of those services resolved at the same time. This can be used to build services that combine collections of other services like in a reporting system:

$container->add(BillingReport::class)->addTag('reports');
$container->add(UsageReport::class)->addTag('reports');

$container->add(ReportAggregate::class, function () use ($container) {
    return new ReportAggregate($container->get('reports'));
});

Using Configuration Data

Often you’ll need configuration data in your services. While you could add all the configuration keys your service needs into the container, that can be tedious. To make configuration easier to work with CakePHP includes an injectable configuration reader:

use Cake\Core\ServiceConfig;

// Use a shared instance
$container->addShared(ServiceConfig::class);

The ServiceConfig class provides a read-only view of all the data available in Configure so you don’t have to worry about accidentally changing configuration.

Service Providers

Service providers allow you to group related services together helping you organize your services. Service providers can help increase your application’s performance as defined services are lazily registered after their first use.

Creating Service Providers

An example ServiceProvider would look like:

namespace App\ServiceProvider;

use Cake\Core\ContainerInterface;
use Cake\Core\ServiceProvider;
// Other imports here.

class BillingServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    protected $provides = [
        StripeService::class,
        'configKey',
    ];

    public function services(ContainerInterface $container): void
    {
        $container->add(StripeService::class);
        $container->add('configKey', 'some value');
    }
}

Service providers use their services() method to define all the services they will provide. Additionally those services must be defined in the $provides property. Failing to include a service in the $provides property will result in it not be loadable from the container.

Using Service Providers

To load a service provider add it into the container using the addServiceProvider() method:

// in your Application::services() method.
$container->addServiceProvider(new BillingServiceProvider());

Bootable ServiceProviders

If your service provider needs to run logic when it is added to the container, you can implement the bootstrap() method. This situation can come up when your service provider needs to load additional configuration files, load additional service providers or modify a service defined elsewhere in your application. An example of a bootable service would be:

namespace App\ServiceProvider;

use Cake\Core\ServiceProvider;
// Other imports here.

class BillingServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    protected $provides = [
        StripeService::class,
        'configKey',
    ];

    public function bootstrap($container)
    {
        $container->addServiceProvider(new InvoicingServiceProvider());
    }
}

Mocking Services in Tests

In tests that use ConsoleIntegrationTestTrait or IntegrationTestTrait you can replace services that are injected via the container with mocks or stubs:

// In a test method or setup().
$this->mockService(StripeService::class, function () {
    return new FakeStripe();
});

// If you need to remove a mock
$this->removeMockService(StripeService::class);

Any defined mocks will be replaced in your application’s container during testing, and automatically injected into your controllers and commands. Mocks are cleaned up at the end of each test.

Auto Wiring

Auto Wiring is turned off by default. To enable it:

// In src/Application.php
public function services(ContainerInterface $container): void
{
    $container->add(\Cake\Controller\ComponentRegistry::class);
    $container->delegate(
        new \League\Container\ReflectionContainer()
    );
}

The $container->add(\Cake\Controller\ComponentRegistry::class); is needed to fix a cyclic dependency between ComponentRegistry and Controller.

While your dependencies will now be resolved automatically, this approach will not cache resolutions which can be detrimental to performance. To enable caching:

$container->delegate(
     // or consider using the value of Configure::read('debug')
    new \League\Container\ReflectionContainer(true)
);

Read more about auto wiring in the PHP League Container documentation.