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Working with Tagged Services

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Working with Tagged Services

Tags are a generic string (along with some options) that can be applied to any service. By themselves, tags don't actually alter the functionality of your services in any way. But if you choose to, you can ask a container builder for a list of all services that were tagged with some specific tag. This is useful in compiler passes where you can find these services and use or modify them in some specific way.

For example, if you are using Swift Mailer you might imagine that you want to implement a "transport chain", which is a collection of classes implementing \Swift_Transport. Using the chain, you'll want Swift Mailer to try several ways of transporting the message until one succeeds.

To begin with, define the TransportChain class:

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class TransportChain
{
    private $transports;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->transports = array();
    }

    public function addTransport(\Swift_Transport $transport)
    {
        $this->transports[] = $transport;
    }
}

Then, define the chain as a service:

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    services:
    acme_mailer.transport_chain:
        class: TransportChain
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    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">

    <services>
        <service id="acme_mailer.transport_chain" class="TransportChain" />
    </services>
</container>
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    $container->register('acme_mailer.transport_chain', 'TransportChain');

Define Services with a Custom Tag

Now you might want several of the \Swift_Transport classes to be instantiated and added to the chain automatically using the addTransport() method. For example you may add the following transports as services:

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    services:
    acme_mailer.transport.smtp:
        class: \Swift_SmtpTransport
        arguments:
            - '%mailer_host%'
        tags:
            -  { name: acme_mailer.transport }
    acme_mailer.transport.sendmail:
        class: \Swift_SendmailTransport
        tags:
            -  { name: acme_mailer.transport }
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    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">

    <services>
        <service id="acme_mailer.transport.smtp" class="\Swift_SmtpTransport">
            <argument>%mailer_host%</argument>
            <tag name="acme_mailer.transport" />
        </service>

        <service id="acme_mailer.transport.sendmail" class="\Swift_SendmailTransport">
            <tag name="acme_mailer.transport" />
        </service>
    </services>
</container>
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    use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Definition;

$definitionSmtp = new Definition('\Swift_SmtpTransport', array('%mailer_host%'));
$definitionSmtp->addTag('acme_mailer.transport');
$container->setDefinition('acme_mailer.transport.smtp', $definitionSmtp);

$definitionSendmail = new Definition('\Swift_SendmailTransport');
$definitionSendmail->addTag('acme_mailer.transport');
$container->setDefinition('acme_mailer.transport.sendmail', $definitionSendmail);

Notice that each was given a tag named acme_mailer.transport. This is the custom tag that you'll use in your compiler pass. The compiler pass is what makes this tag "mean" something.

Create a CompilerPass

Your compiler pass can now ask the container for any services with the custom tag:

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use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerBuilder;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Compiler\CompilerPassInterface;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Reference;

class TransportCompilerPass implements CompilerPassInterface
{
    public function process(ContainerBuilder $container)
    {
        if (!$container->has('acme_mailer.transport_chain')) {
            return;
        }

        $definition = $container->findDefinition(
            'acme_mailer.transport_chain'
        );

        $taggedServices = $container->findTaggedServiceIds(
            'acme_mailer.transport'
        );
        foreach ($taggedServices as $id => $tags) {
            $definition->addMethodCall(
                'addTransport',
                array(new Reference($id))
            );
        }
    }
}

The process() method checks for the existence of the acme_mailer.transport_chain service, then looks for all services tagged acme_mailer.transport. It adds to the definition of the acme_mailer.transport_chain service a call to addTransport() for each "acme_mailer.transport" service it has found. The first argument of each of these calls will be the mailer transport service itself.

Register the Pass with the Container

You also need to register the pass with the container, it will then be run when the container is compiled:

use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerBuilder;

$container = new ContainerBuilder();
$container->addCompilerPass(new TransportCompilerPass());

Note

Compiler passes are registered differently if you are using the full-stack framework. See How to Work with Compiler Passes in Bundles for more details.

Adding Additional Attributes on Tags

Sometimes you need additional information about each service that's tagged with your tag. For example, you might want to add an alias to each member of the transport chain.

To begin with, change the TransportChain class:

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class TransportChain
{
    private $transports;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->transports = array();
    }

    public function addTransport(\Swift_Transport $transport, $alias)
    {
        $this->transports[$alias] = $transport;
    }

    public function getTransport($alias)
    {
        if (array_key_exists($alias, $this->transports)) {
            return $this->transports[$alias];
        }
    }
}

As you can see, when addTransport is called, it takes not only a Swift_Transport object, but also a string alias for that transport. So, how can you allow each tagged transport service to also supply an alias?

To answer this, change the service declaration:

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    services:
    acme_mailer.transport.smtp:
        class: \Swift_SmtpTransport
        arguments:
            - '%mailer_host%'
        tags:
            -  { name: acme_mailer.transport, alias: foo }
    acme_mailer.transport.sendmail:
        class: \Swift_SendmailTransport
        tags:
            -  { name: acme_mailer.transport, alias: bar }
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    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">

    <services>
        <service id="acme_mailer.transport.smtp" class="\Swift_SmtpTransport">
            <argument>%mailer_host%</argument>
            <tag name="acme_mailer.transport" alias="foo" />
        </service>

        <service id="acme_mailer.transport.sendmail" class="\Swift_SendmailTransport">
            <tag name="acme_mailer.transport" alias="bar" />
        </service>
    </services>
</container>
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    use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Definition;

$definitionSmtp = new Definition('\Swift_SmtpTransport', array('%mailer_host%'));
$definitionSmtp->addTag('acme_mailer.transport', array('alias' => 'foo'));
$container->setDefinition('acme_mailer.transport.smtp', $definitionSmtp);

$definitionSendmail = new Definition('\Swift_SendmailTransport');
$definitionSendmail->addTag('acme_mailer.transport', array('alias' => 'bar'));
$container->setDefinition('acme_mailer.transport.sendmail', $definitionSendmail);

Notice that you've added a generic alias key to the tag. To actually use this, update the compiler:

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use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerBuilder;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Compiler\CompilerPassInterface;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Reference;

class TransportCompilerPass implements CompilerPassInterface
{
    public function process(ContainerBuilder $container)
    {
        if (!$container->hasDefinition('acme_mailer.transport_chain')) {
            return;
        }

        $definition = $container->getDefinition(
            'acme_mailer.transport_chain'
        );

        $taggedServices = $container->findTaggedServiceIds(
            'acme_mailer.transport'
        );
        foreach ($taggedServices as $id => $tags) {
            foreach ($tags as $attributes) {
                $definition->addMethodCall(
                    'addTransport',
                    array(new Reference($id), $attributes["alias"])
                );
            }
        }
    }
}

The double loop may be confusing. This is because a service can have more than one tag. You tag a service twice or more with the acme_mailer.transport tag. The second foreach loop iterates over the acme_mailer.transport tags set for the current service and gives you the attributes.

This work, including the code samples, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.