Service Method Calls and Setter Injection

5.3 version

Maintained

4.4 5.3 current 5.4 dev 6.0

Unmaintained

2.7 2.8 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.0 5.1 5.2

edit this page

Symfony 5.3 is backed by JoliCode.

Service Method Calls and Setter Injection¶

Tip

If you’re using autowiring, you can use #[Required] or @required to automatically configure method calls.

Usually, you’ll want to inject your dependencies via the constructor. But sometimes, especially if a dependency is optional, you may want to use “setter injection”. For example:

// src/Service/MessageGenerator.php
namespace App\Service;

use Psr\Log\LoggerInterface;

class MessageGenerator
{
    private $logger;

    public function setLogger(LoggerInterface $logger): void
    {
        $this->logger = $logger;
    }

    // ...
}

To configure the container to call the setLogger method, use the calls key:

YAML

# config/services.yaml
services:
    App\Service\MessageGenerator:
        # ...
        calls:
            - setLogger: ['@logger']

XML

<!-- 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\Service\MessageGenerator">
            <!-- ... -->
            <call method="setLogger">
                <argument type="service" id="logger"/>
            </call>
        </service>
    </services>
</container>

PHP

// config/services.php
namespace Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Loader\Configurator;

use App\Service\MessageGenerator;

return function(ContainerConfigurator $configurator) {
    // ...

    $services->set(MessageGenerator::class)
        // In versions earlier to Symfony 5.1 the service() function was called ref()
        ->call('setLogger', [service('logger')]);
};

To provide immutable services, some classes implement immutable setters. Such setters return a new instance of the configured class instead of mutating the object they were called on:

// src/Service/MessageGenerator.php
namespace App\Service;

use Psr\Log\LoggerInterface;

class MessageGenerator
{
    private $logger;

    public function withLogger(LoggerInterface $logger): self
    {
        $new = clone $this;
        $new->logger = $logger;

        return $new;
    }

    // ...
}

Because the method returns a separate cloned instance, configuring such a service means using the return value of the wither method ($service = $service->withLogger($logger);). The configuration to tell the container it should do so would be like:

YAML

# config/services.yaml
services:
    App\Service\MessageGenerator:
        # ...
        calls:
            - withLogger: !returns_clone ['@logger']

XML

<!-- config/services.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="https://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\Service\MessageGenerator">
            <!-- ... -->
            <call method="withLogger" returns-clone="true">
                <argument type="service" id="logger"/>
            </call>
        </service>
    </services>
</container>

PHP

// config/services.php
use App\Service\MessageGenerator;
use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Reference;

$container->register(MessageGenerator::class)
    ->addMethodCall('withLogger', [new Reference('logger')], true);

Tip

If autowire is enabled, you can also use annotations; with the previous example it would be:

/**
 * @required
 * @return static
 */
public function withLogger(LoggerInterface $logger)
{
    $new = clone $this;
    $new->logger = $logger;

    return $new;
}

You can also leverage the PHP 8 static return type instead of the @return static annotation. If you don’t want a method with a PHP 8 static return type and a @required annotation to behave as a wither, you can add a @return $this annotation to disable the returns clone feature.

New in version 5.1: Support for the PHP 8 static return type was introduced in Symfony 5.1.

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