Resolving dependencies conditionally using service container in Laravel
One of the standard ways to resolve dependencies in Laravel is by using service container. Essentially, if you want to inject something which can be swappable anytime, you can do this by “biding” that into the service container.
For instance, let’s say we’re using payment gateways into our application. So, what we can do is define an interface that contains certain methods called payment and discount like so.
namespace App\Payment\Contract;
interface PaymentInterface
{
public function payment();
public function discount();
}
And now if we want to use a payment method in our application, we can create a class for that payment method which will implement the App\Payment\Contract\PaymentInterface. So, if we’re using a credit card payment method, we can create it like so.
namespace App\Payment;
use App\Payment\Contract\PaymentInterface;
class CreditCard implements PaymentInterface
{
public function payment()
{
// process payment
}
public function discount()
{
// process discount
}
}
Binding interface to the class
If we want to inject App\Payment\Contract\PaymentInterface into any controller constructor across the application and wish that it should get resolved to App\Payment\CreditCard class every time, we’d need to bind it into the service container using the bind or singleton method like so.
$this->app->bind(
'App\Payment\Contract\PaymentInterface',
'App\Payment\CreditCard'
);
This will tell the container that it should inject the App\Payment\CreditCard when a class needs an implementation of App\Payment\Contract\PaymentInterface. Now we can type-hint the App\Payment\Contract\PaymentInterface interface in a constructor or any other location where dependencies are injected by the service container and it will get resolved to App\Payment\CreditCard like so.
use App\Payment\Contract\PaymentInterface;
public function __construct(PaymentInterface $payment)
{
$this->payment = $payment;
}
Resolve dependencies conditionally/contextually
Imagine now we have another payment method called App\Payment\Stripe which is also implementing the App\Payment\Contract\PaymentInterface interface and you want to use both payment methods but in different controllers. For instance, you want to use the CreditCard class in the AccountRenewalController controller and Stripe class in the PurchaseController controller, how would you do that?
Well, the answer is, we’ll need to bind both of them conditionally based on where they are being invoked. This can be achieved using a simple, fluent interface where we can define how dependencies should be resolved in certain scenarios.
So, if we want to resolve App\Payment\Contract\PaymentInterface to App\Payment\CreditCard in the AccountRenewalController controller, we can define the binding like so.
use App\Http\Controllers\AccountRenewalController;
use App\Payment\Contract\PaymentInterface;
use App\Payment\CreditCard;
$this->app->when(AccountRenewalController::class)
->needs(PaymentInterface::class)
->give(CreditCard::class);
And if we want to resolve App\Payment\Contract\PaymentInterface to App\Payment\Stripe in the PurchaseController controller, we can define the binding like so.
use App\Http\Controllers\PurchaseController;
use App\Payment\Contract\PaymentInterface;
use App\Payment\Stripe;
$this->app->when(PurchaseController::class)
->needs(PaymentInterface::class)
->give(function () {
return Stripe('sid', 'token')
});
As you can see, you can create contexts based on where the dependencies are being used and return/resolve classes or class instances accordingly.
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