Understanding Scopes

The scope of a service controls how long an instance of a service is used by the container. The DependencyInjection component provides two generic scopes:

• container (the default one): The same instance is used each time you request it from this container.
• prototype: A new instance is created each time you request the service.

The FrameworkBundle also defines a third scope: request. This scope is tied to the request, meaning a new instance is created for each subrequest and is unavailable outside the request (for instance in the CLI).

Scopes add a constraint on the dependencies of a service: a service cannot depend on services from a narrower scope. For example, if you create a generic my_foo service, but try to inject the request component, you'll receive a ScopeWideningInjectionException when compiling the container. Read the sidebar below for more details.

Setting the Scope in the Definition

The scope of a service is set in the definition of the service:

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# src/Acme/HelloBundle/Resources/config/services.yml
services:
    greeting_card_manager:
        class: Acme\HelloBundle\Mail\GreetingCardManager
        scope: request

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<!-- src/Acme/HelloBundle/Resources/config/services.xml -->
<services>
    <service id="greeting_card_manager" class="Acme\HelloBundle\Mail\GreetingCardManager" scope="request" />
</services>

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// src/Acme/HelloBundle/Resources/config/services.php
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Definition;

$container->setDefinition(
    'greeting_card_manager',
    new Definition('Acme\HelloBundle\Mail\GreetingCardManager')
)->setScope('request');

If you don't specify the scope, it defaults to container, which is what you want most of the time. Unless your service depends on another service that's scoped to a narrower scope (most commonly, the request service), you probably don't need to set the scope.

Using a Service from a narrower Scope

If your service depends on a scoped service, the best solution is to put it in the same scope (or a narrower one). Usually, this means putting your new service in the request scope.

But this is not always possible (for instance, a Twig extension must be in the container scope as the Twig environment needs it as a dependency). In these cases, you should pass the entire container into your service and retrieve your dependency from the container each time you need it to be sure you have the right instance:

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// src/Acme/HelloBundle/Mail/Mailer.php
namespace Acme\HelloBundle\Mail;

use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerInterface;

class Mailer
{
    protected $container;

    public function __construct(ContainerInterface $container)
    {
        $this->container = $container;
    }

    public function sendEmail()
    {
        $request = $this->container->get('request');
        // ... do something using the request here
    }
}

The service config for this class would look something like this:

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# src/Acme/HelloBundle/Resources/config/services.yml
parameters:
    # ...
    my_mailer.class: Acme\HelloBundle\Mail\Mailer
services:
    my_mailer:
        class:     "%my_mailer.class%"
        arguments:
            - "@service_container"
        # scope: container can be omitted as it is the default

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<!-- src/Acme/HelloBundle/Resources/config/services.xml -->
<parameters>
    <!-- ... -->
    <parameter key="my_mailer.class">Acme\HelloBundle\Mail\Mailer</parameter>
</parameters>

<services>
    <service id="my_mailer" class="%my_mailer.class%">
         <argument type="service" id="service_container" />
    </service>
</services>

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// src/Acme/HelloBundle/Resources/config/services.php
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Definition;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Reference;

// ...
$container->setParameter('my_mailer.class', 'Acme\HelloBundle\Mail\Mailer');

$container->setDefinition('my_mailer', new Definition(
    '%my_mailer.class%',
    array(new Reference('service_container'))
));

If you define a controller as a service then you can get the Request object without injecting the container by having it passed in as an argument of your action method. See Controller for details.