How to Work with Service Tags
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Service tags are a way to tell Symfony or other third-party bundles that your service should be registered in some special way. Take the following example:
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# app/config/services.yml
services:
AppBundle\Twig\AppExtension:
public: false
tags: ['twig.extension']
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<!-- app/config/services.xml -->
<?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
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">
<services>
<service id="AppBundle\Twig\AppExtension" public="false">
<tag name="twig.extension"/>
</service>
</services>
</container>
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// app/config/services.php
use AppBundle\Twig\AppExtension;
$container->register(AppExtension::class)
->setPublic(false)
->addTag('twig.extension');
Services tagged with the twig.extension
tag are collected during the
initialization of TwigBundle and added to Twig as extensions.
Other tags are used to integrate your services into other systems. For a list of
all the tags available in the core Symfony Framework, check out
Built-in Symfony Service Tags. Each of these has a different effect on your service
and many tags require additional arguments (beyond just the name
parameter).
For most users, this is all you need to know. If you want to go further and learn how to create your own custom tags, keep reading.
Autoconfiguring Tags
Starting in Symfony 3.3, if you enable autoconfigure,
then some tags are automatically applied for you. That's true for the twig.extension
tag: the container sees that your class extends AbstractExtension
(or more accurately,
that it implements ExtensionInterface
) and adds the tag for you.
If you want to apply tags automatically for your own services, use the
_instanceof
option:
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# app/config/services.yml
services:
# this config only applies to the services created by this file
_instanceof:
# services whose classes are instances of CustomInterface will be tagged automatically
AppBundle\Security\CustomInterface:
tags: ['app.custom_tag']
# ...
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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 https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">
<services>
<!-- this config only applies to the services created by this file -->
<instanceof id="AppBundle\Security\CustomInterface" autowire="true">
<!-- services whose classes are instances of CustomInterface will be tagged automatically -->
<tag name="app.custom_tag"/>
</instanceof>
</services>
</container>
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use AppBundle\Security\CustomInterface;
// ...
// services whose classes are instances of CustomInterface will be tagged automatically
$container->registerForAutoconfiguration(CustomInterface::class)
->addTag('app.custom_tag')
->setAutowired(true);
For more advanced needs, you can define the automatic tags using the registerForAutoconfiguration() method in an extension or from your kernel:
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// app/AppKernel.php
class AppKernel extends Kernel
{
// ...
protected function build(ContainerBuilder $container)
{
$container->registerForAutoconfiguration(CustomInterface::class)
->addTag('app.custom_tag')
;
}
}
Creating custom Tags
Tags on their own 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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// src/AppBundle/Mail/TransportChain.php
namespace AppBundle\Mail;
class TransportChain
{
private $transports;
public function __construct()
{
$this->transports = [];
}
public function addTransport(\Swift_Transport $transport)
{
$this->transports[] = $transport;
}
}
Then, define the chain as a service:
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services:
AppBundle\Mail\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
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">
<services>
<service id="AppBundle\Mail\TransportChain"/>
</services>
</container>
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use AppBundle\Mail\TransportChain;
$container->autowire(TransportChain::class);
Define Services with a Custom Tag
Now you might want several of the \Swift_Transport
classes to be instantiated
and added to the chain automatically using the addTransport()
method.
For example, you may add the following transports as services:
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services:
Swift_SmtpTransport:
arguments: ['%mailer_host%']
tags: ['app.mail_transport']
Swift_SendmailTransport:
tags: ['app.mail_transport']
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">
<services>
<service id="Swift_SmtpTransport">
<argument>%mailer_host%</argument>
<tag name="app.mail_transport"/>
</service>
<service id="Swift_SendmailTransport">
<tag name="app.mail_transport"/>
</service>
</services>
</container>
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$container->register(\Swift_SmtpTransport::class)
->addArgument('%mailer_host%')
->addTag('app.mail_transport');
$container->register(\Swift_SendmailTransport::class)
->addTag('app.mail_transport');
Notice that each service was given a tag named app.mail_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 Compiler Pass
You can now use a compiler pass to ask the
container for any services with the app.mail_transport
tag:
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// src/AppBundle/DependencyInjection/Compiler/MailTransportPass.php
namespace AppBundle\DependencyInjection\Compiler;
use AppBundle\Mail\TransportChain;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Compiler\CompilerPassInterface;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerBuilder;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Reference;
class MailTransportPass implements CompilerPassInterface
{
public function process(ContainerBuilder $container)
{
// always first check if the primary service is defined
if (!$container->has(TransportChain::class)) {
return;
}
$definition = $container->findDefinition(TransportChain::class);
// find all service IDs with the app.mail_transport tag
$taggedServices = $container->findTaggedServiceIds('app.mail_transport');
foreach ($taggedServices as $id => $tags) {
// add the transport service to the TransportChain service
$definition->addMethodCall('addTransport', [new Reference($id)]);
}
}
}
Register the Pass with the Container
In order to run the compiler pass when the container is compiled, you have to
add the compiler pass to the container in the build()
method of your
bundle:
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// src/AppBundle/AppBundle.php
// ...
use AppBundle\DependencyInjection\Compiler\MailTransportPass;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerBuilder;
class AppBundle extends Bundle
{
public function build(ContainerBuilder $container)
{
$container->addCompilerPass(new MailTransportPass());
}
}
Tip
When implementing the CompilerPassInterface
in a service extension, you
do not need to register it. See the
components documentation for more
information.
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 = [];
}
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:
Swift_SmtpTransport:
arguments: ['%mailer_host%']
tags:
- { name: 'app.mail_transport', alias: 'smtp' }
Swift_SendmailTransport:
tags:
- { name: 'app.mail_transport', alias: 'sendmail' }
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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
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">
<services>
<service id="Swift_SmtpTransport">
<argument>%mailer_host%</argument>
<tag name="app.mail_transport" alias="smtp"/>
</service>
<service id="Swift_SendmailTransport">
<tag name="app.mail_transport" alias="sendmail"/>
</service>
</services>
</container>
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$container->register(\Swift_SmtpTransport::class)
->addArgument('%mailer_host%')
->addTag('app.mail_transport', ['alias' => 'smtp']);
$container->register(\Swift_SendmailTransport::class)
->addTag('app.mail_transport', ['alias' => 'sendmail']);
Tip
In YAML format, you may provide the tag as a simple string as long as you don't need to specify additional attributes. The following definitions are equivalent.
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services:
# Compact syntax
Swift_SendmailTransport:
class: \Swift_SendmailTransport
tags: ['app.mail_transport']
# Verbose syntax
Swift_SendmailTransport:
class: \Swift_SendmailTransport
tags:
- { name: 'app.mail_transport' }
3.3
Support for the compact tag notation in the YAML format was introduced in Symfony 3.3.
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\Compiler\CompilerPassInterface;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\ContainerBuilder;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Reference;
class TransportCompilerPass implements CompilerPassInterface
{
public function process(ContainerBuilder $container)
{
// ...
foreach ($taggedServices as $id => $tags) {
// a service could have the same tag twice
foreach ($tags as $attributes) {
$definition->addMethodCall('addTransport', [
new Reference($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 app.mail_transport
tag. The second foreach
loop iterates over the app.mail_transport
tags set for the current service and gives you the attributes.
Reference Tagged Services
3.4
Support for the tagged service notation in YAML, XML and PHP was introduced in Symfony 3.4.
Symfony provides a shortcut to inject all services tagged with a specific tag, which is a common need in some applications, so you don't have to write a compiler pass just for that.
In the following example, all services tagged with app.handler
are passed as
first constructor argument to the App\HandlerCollection
service:
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# app/config/services.yml
services:
AppBundle\Handler\One:
tags: ['app.handler']
AppBundle\Handler\Two:
tags: ['app.handler']
AppBundle\HandlerCollection:
# inject all services tagged with app.handler as first argument
arguments:
- !tagged app.handler
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<!-- app/config/services.xml -->
<?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
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">
<services>
<service id="AppBundle\Handler\One">
<tag name="app.handler"/>
</service>
<service id="AppBundle\Handler\Two">
<tag name="app.handler"/>
</service>
<service id="AppBundle\HandlerCollection">
<!-- inject all services tagged with app.handler as first argument -->
<argument type="tagged" tag="app.handler"/>
</service>
</services>
</container>
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// app/config/services.php
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Argument\TaggedIteratorArgument;
$container->register(AppBundle\Handler\One::class)
->addTag('app.handler');
$container->register(AppBundle\Handler\Two::class)
->addTag('app.handler');
$container->register(AppBundle\HandlerCollection::class)
// inject all services tagged with app.handler as first argument
->addArgument(new TaggedIteratorArgument('app.handler'));
After compilation the HandlerCollection
service is able to iterate over your
application handlers:
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// src/AppBundle/HandlerCollection.php
namespace AppBundle;
class HandlerCollection
{
public function __construct(iterable $handlers)
{
}
}
Tip
The collected services can be prioritized using the priority
attribute:
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# app/config/services.yml
services:
AppBundle\Handler\One:
tags:
- { name: 'app.handler', priority: 20 }
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<!-- app/config/services.xml -->
<?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
https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">
<services>
<service id="AppBundle\Handler\One">
<tag name="app.handler" priority="20"/>
</service>
</services>
</container>
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// app/config/services.php
$container->register(AppBundle\Handler\One::class)
->addTag('app.handler', ['priority' => 20]);
Note that any other custom attributes will be ignored by this feature.