How to Inject Values Based on Complex Expressions

Edit this page

Warning: You are browsing the documentation for Symfony 4.2, which is no longer maintained.

Read the updated version of this page for Symfony 7.0 (the current stable version).

How to Inject Values Based on Complex Expressions

The service container also supports an "expression" that allows you to inject very specific values into a service.

For example, suppose you have a service (not shown here), called App\Mail\MailerConfiguration, which has a getMailerMethod() method on it. This returns a string - like sendmail based on some configuration.

Suppose that you want to pass the result of this method as a constructor argument to another service: App\Mailer. One way to do this is with an expression:

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
        # config/services.yaml
services:
    # ...

    App\Mail\MailerConfiguration: ~

    App\Mailer:
        arguments: ["@=service('App\\\\Mail\\\\MailerConfiguration').getMailerMethod()"]
    

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
        <!-- 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="App\Mail\MailerConfiguration"></service>

        <service id="App\Mailer">
            <argument type="expression">service('App\\Mail\\MailerConfiguration').getMailerMethod()</argument>
        </service>
    </services>
</container>
    

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
        // config/services.php
use App\Mail\MailerConfiguration;
use App\Mailer;
use Symfony\Component\ExpressionLanguage\Expression;

$container->autowire(MailerConfiguration::class);

$container->autowire(Mailer::class)
    ->addArgument(new Expression('service("App\\\\Mail\\\\MailerConfiguration").getMailerMethod()'));
    

To learn more about the expression language syntax, see The Expression Syntax.

In this context, you have access to 2 functions:

service: Returns a given service (see the example above).
parameter: Returns a specific parameter value (syntax is just like service).

You also have access to the Container via a container variable. Here's another example:

        1
2
3
4
        # config/services.yaml
services:
    App\Mailer:
        arguments: ["@=container.hasParameter('some_param') ? parameter('some_param') : 'default_value'"]
    

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
        <!-- 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="App\Mailer">
            <argument type="expression">container.hasParameter('some_param') ? parameter('some_param') : 'default_value'</argument>
        </service>
    </services>
</container>
    

        1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
        // config/services.php
use App\Mailer;
use Symfony\Component\ExpressionLanguage\Expression;

$container->autowire(Mailer::class)
    ->addArgument(new Expression(
        "container.hasParameter('some_param') ? parameter('some_param') : 'default_value'"
    ));
    

Expressions can be used in arguments, properties, as arguments with configurator and as arguments to calls (method calls).

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

How to Inject Values Based on Complex Expressions

How to Inject Values Based on Complex Expressions

What is Symfony?

Learn Symfony

Screencasts

Community

Blog

Services

Deployed on