Service Container

Service Container

Introduction

The Service Container is an extremely powerful feature of Masonite and should be used to the fullest extent possible. It's important to understand the concepts of the Service Container. It's a simple concept but is a bit magical if you don't understand what's going on under the hood.

Getting Started

The Service Container is just a dictionary where classes are loaded into it by key-value pairs, and then can be retrieved by either the key or value through resolving objects. That's it.

Think of "resolving objects" as Masonite saying "what does your object need? Ok, I have them in this dictionary, let me get them for you."

The container holds all of the frameworks classes and features so adding features to Masonite only entails adding classes into the container to be used by the developer later on. This typically means "registering" these classes into the container (more about this later on).

This allows Masonite to be extremely modular.

There are a few objects that are resolved by the container by default. These include your controller methods (which are the most common and you have probably used them so far) driver and middleware constructors and any other classes that are specified in the documentation.

There are four methods that are important in interacting with the container: bind, make and resolve

Bind

In order to bind classes into the container, we will just need to use a simple bind method on our app container. In a service provider, that will look like:

from masonite.provider import ServiceProvider
from app.User import User

class UserModelProvider(ServiceProvider):

    def register(self):
        self.app.bind('User', User)

    def boot(self):
        pass

This will load the key value pair in the providers dictionary in the container. The dictionary after this call will look like:

>>> app.providers
{'User': <class app.User.User>}

The service container is available in the Request object and can be retrieved by:

def show(self, request: Request):
    request.app() # will return the service container

Simple Binding

Sometimes you really don't care what the key is for the object you are binding. For example you may be binding a Markdown class into the container but really don't care what the key binding is called. This is a great reason to use simple binding which will set the key as the object class:

from masonite.provider import ServiceProvider
from app.User import User


class UserModelProvider(ServiceProvider):

    def register(self):
        self.app.simple(User)

    def boot(self):
        pass

Make

In order to retrieve a class from the service container, we can simply use the make method.

>>> from app.User import User
>>> app.bind('User', User)
>>> app.make('User')
<class app.User.User>

That's it! This is useful as an IOC container which you can load a single class into the container and use that class everywhere throughout your project.

Singleton

You can bind singletons into the container. This will resolve the object at the time of binding. This will allow the same object to be used throughout the lifetime of the server.

from masonite.provider import ServiceProvider
from app.helpers import SomeClass


class UserModelProvider(ServiceProvider):

    def register(self):
        self.app.singleton('SomeClass', SomeClass)

    def boot(self):
        pass

Has

You can also check if a key exists in the container by using the has method:

app.has('Request')

You can also check if a key exists in the container by using the in keyword.

'Request' in app

Collecting

You may want to collect specific kinds of objects from the container based on the key. For example we may want all objects that start with "Exception" and end with "Hook" or want all keys that end with "ExceptionHook" if we are building an exception handler.

Collect By Key

We can easily collect all objects based on a key:

app.collect('*ExceptionHook')

This will return a dictionary of all objects that are binded to the container that start with anything and end with "ExceptionHook" such as "SentryExceptionHook" or "AwesomeExceptionHook".

We can also do the opposite and collect everything that starts with a specific key:

app.collect('Sentry*')

This will collect all keys that start with "Sentry" such as "SentryWebhook" or "SentryExceptionHandler."

Lastly, we may want to collect things that start with "Sentry" and end with "Hook"

app.collect('Sentry*Hook')

This will get keys like "SentryExceptionHook" and "SentryHandlerHook"

Collecting By Object

You can also collect all subclasses of an object. You may use this if you want to collect all instances of a specific class from the container:

from cleo import Command
...
app.collect(Command)
# Returns {'FirstCommand': <class ...>, 'AnotherCommand': ...}

Resolve

This is the most useful part of the container. It is possible to retrieve objects from the container by simply passing them into the parameter list of any object. Certain aspects of Masonite are resolved such as controller methods, middleware and drivers.

For example, we can type hint that we want to get the Request class and put it into our controller. All controller methods are resolved by the container. Masonite 2.1 only supports annotations resolving by default:

def show(self, request: Request):
    request.user()

In this example, before the show method is called, Masonite will look at the parameters and look inside the container for the Request object.

Masonite will know that you are trying to get the Request class and will actually retrieve that class from the container. Masonite will search the container for a Request class regardless of what the key is in the container, retrieve it, and inject it into the controller method. Effectively creating an IOC container with dependency injection. capabilities Think of this as a get by value instead of a get by key like the earlier example.

Pretty powerful stuff, eh?

Resolving Instances

Another powerful feature of the container is it can actually return instances of classes you annotate. For example, all Upload drivers inherit from the UploadContract which simply acts as an interface for all Upload drivers. Many programming paradigms say that developers should code to an interface instead of an implementation so Masonite allows instances of classes to be returned for this specific use case.

Take this example:

from masonite.contracts import UploadContract

def show(self, upload: UploadContract)
    upload # <class masonite.drivers.UploadDiskDriver>

Notice that we passed in a contract instead of the upload class. Masonite went into the container and fetched a class with the instance of the contract.

Resolving Parameters

This feature should not be used and you should instead use the more explicit form of resolving in the section above.

You can technically still resolve parameters with your container like you could in previous versions of Masonite. Resolving a parameter looked like this:

from masonite.request import Request

def show(self, request: Request):
    request.user()

Although this was removed in 2.1+, you may still enable it on a per project basis. To enable it, go to your wsgi.py file and add this to the constructor of your App class towards the top of the file:

container = App(resolve_parameters=True)

Your project will now resolve parameters as well. Resolving parameters looks for the key in the container instead of the class.

Resolving your own code

The service container can also be used outside of the flow of Masonite. Masonite takes in a function or class method, and resolves it's dependencies by finding them in the service container and injecting them for you.

Because of this, you can resolve any of your own classes or functions.

from masonite.request import Request
from masonite.view import View

def randomFunction(view: View):
    print(view)

def show(self, request: Request):
    request.app().resolve(randomFunction) # Will print the View object

Remember not to call it and only reference the function. The Service Container needs to inject dependencies into the object so it requires a reference and not a callable.

This will fetch all of the parameters of randomFunction and retrieve them from the service container. There probably won't be many times you'll have to resolve your own code but the option is there.

Resolving With Additional Parameters

Sometimes you may wish to resolve your code in addition to passing in variables within the same parameter list. For example you may want to have 3 parameters like this:

from masonite.request import Request
from masonite import Mail

def send_email(request: Request, mail: Mail, email):
    pass

You can resolve and pass parameter at the same time by adding them to the resolve() method:

app.resolve(send_email, '[e-mail]')

Masonite will go through each parameter list and resolve them, if it does not find the parameter it will pull it from the other parameters specified. These parameters can be in any order.

Using the container outside of Masonite flow

If you need to utilize a container outside the normal flow of Masonite like inside a command then you can import the container directly.

This would look something like:

from wsgi import container
from masonite import Queue

class SomeCommand:

    def handle(self):
        queue = container.make(Queue)
        queue.push(..)

Container Swapping

Sometimes when you resolve an object or class, you want a different value to be returned.

Using a value:

We can pass a simple value as the second parameter to the swap method which will be returned instead of the object being resolved. For example this is used currently when resolving the Mail class like this:

from masonite import Mail

def show(self, mail: Mail):
    mail #== <masonite.drivers.MailSmtpDriver>

but the class definition for the Mail class here looks like this:

class Mail:
    pass

How does it know to resolve the smtp driver instead? It's because we added a container swap. Container swaps are simple, they take the object as the first parameter and either a value or a callable as the second.

For example we may want to mock the functionality above by doing something like this in the boot method of a Service Provider:

from masonite import Mail

def boot(self, mail: MailManager):
    self.app.swap(Mail, manager.driver(self.app.make('MailConfig').DRIVER))

Notice that we specified which class should be returned whenever we resolve the Mail class. In this case we want to resolve the default driver specified in the projects configurations.

Using a callable

Instead of directly passing in a value as the second parameter we can pass in a callable instead. The callable MUST take 2 parameters. The first parameter will be the annotation we are trying to resolve and the second will be the container itself. Here is an example of how the above would work with a callable:

from masonite import Mail
from somewhere import NewObject
...

def mail_callback(obj, container):
    return NewObject
...

def boot(self):
    self.app.swap(Mail, mail_callback)

Notice that the second parameter is a callable object. This means that it will be called whenever we try to resolve the Mail class.

Remember: If the second parameter is a callable, it will be called. If it is a value, it will simply be returned instead of the resolving object.

Container Hooks

Sometimes we might want to run some code when things happen inside our container. For example we might want to run some arbitrary function about we resolve the Request object from the container or we might want to bind some values to a View class anytime we bind a Response to the container. This is excellent for testing purposes if we want to bind a user object to the request whenever it is resolved.

We have three options: on_bind, on_make, on_resolve. All we need for the first option is the key or object we want to bind the hook to, and the second option will be a function that takes two arguments. The first argument is the object in question and the second argument is the whole container.

The code might look something like this:

from masonite.request import Request

def attribute_on_make(request_obj, container):
    request_obj.attribute = 'some value'

...

container = App()

# sets the hook
container.on_make('Request', attribute_on_make)
container.bind('Request', Request)

# runs the attribute_on_make function
request = container.make('Request')
request.attribute # 'some value'

Notice that we create a function that accepts two values, the object we are dealing with and the container. Then whenever we run on_make, the function is ran.

We can also bind to specific objects instead of keys:

from masonite.request import Request

...

# sets the hook
container.on_make(Request, attribute_on_make)
container.bind('Request', Request)

# runs the attribute_on_make function
request = container.make('Request')
request.attribute # 'some value'

This then calls the same attribute but anytime the Request object itself is made from the container. Notice everything is the same except line 6 where we are using an object instead of a string.

We can do the same thing with the other options:

container.on_bind(Request, attribute_on_make)
container.on_make(Request, attribute_on_make)
container.on_resolve(Request, attribute_on_make)

Strict and Overriding

By default, Masonite will not care if you override objects from the container. In other words you can do this:

app.bind('number', 1)
app.bind('number', 2)

Without issue. Notice we are binding twice to the same key. You can change this behavior by specifying 2 values in the constructor of the App class:

container = App(strict=True, override=False)

Override

If override is False, it will not override values in the container. It will simply ignore them if you are trying to bind twice to the same key. If override is True, which it is by default, you will be allowed to override keys in the container with new values by binding them.

Strict

Strict will throw an exception if you try binding a key to the container. So with override being False it simply ignored binding a key to the container that already exists, setting strict to True will actually throw an exception.

Remembering

Container remembering is an awesome feature where the container will remember the objects you passed in and instead of resolving the object over and over again which could possibly be expensive, it will pass in the previous objects that were passed in by storing and retrieving them from a separate remembering list the container builds.

Once an object is resolved for the first time, a new dictionary is built containing that object and it's dependencies. The second time that object is resolved, instead of inspecting the object to see which dependencies it should pass in, Masonite will inject the ones from the remembering dictionary.

This can speed up resolving your code by 10 - 15x. A significant speed improvement.

You can enable this on a per application basis by setting the remembering parameter to True on your container class. This can be found in your wsgi.py file:

container = App(remembering = True)