Using my own service with Laravel4 - service

Question

In my app, I was testing Google Directions API with ajax, but since I was just testing all the logic was in the routes.php file. Now I want to do things the proper way and have three layers: route, controller and service.
So in the routes I tell Laravel which method should be executed:
Route::get('/search', 'DirectionsAPIController#search');
And the method just returns what the service is supposed to return:
class DirectionsAPIController extends BaseController {
public function search() {
$directionsSearchService = new DirectionsSearchService();
return $directionsSearchService->search(Input::all());
}
}
I created the service in app/libraries/Services/Directions and called it DirectionsSearchService.php and copied all the logic I developed in routes:
class DirectionsSearchService {
public function search($input = array()) {
$origin = $input['origin'];
$destination = $input['destination'];
$mode = $input['mode'];
// do stuf...
return $data;
}
}
I read the docs and some place else (and this too) and did what I was supposed to do to register a service:
class DirectionsAPIController extends BaseController {
public function search() {
App::register('libraries\Services\Directions\DirectionsSearchService');
$directionsSearchService = new DirectionsSearchService();
return $directionsSearchService->search(Input::all());
}
}
// app/libraries/Services/Directions/DirectionsSearchService.php
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;
class DirectionsSearchService extends ServiceProvider {
}
I also tried adding libraries\Services\Directions\DirectionsSearchService to the providers array in app/config/app.php.
However, I am getting this error:
HP Fatal error: Class
'libraries\Services\Directions\DirectionsSearchService' not found in
/home/user/www/my-app-laravel/bootstrap/compiled.php on line 549
What am I doing wrong? And what is the usual way to use your own services? I don't want to place all the logic in the controller...

Answer 1

2 main things that you are missing:
There is a difference between a ServiceProvider and your class. A service provider in Laravel tells Laravel where to go look for the service, but it does not contain the service logic itself. So DirectionsSearchService should not be both, imho.
You need to register your classes with composer.json so that autoloader knows that your class exists.
To keep it simple I'll go with Laravel IoC's automatic resolution and not using a service provider for now.
app/libraries/Services/Directions/DirectionsSearchService.php:
namespace Services\Directions;
class DirectionsSearchService
{
public function search($input = array())
{
// Your search logic
}
}
You might notice that DirectionsSearchService does not extend anything. Your service becomes very loosely coupled.
And in your DirectionsAPIController.php you do:
class DirectionsAPIController extends BaseController
{
protected $directionsSearchService;
public function __construct(Services\Directions\DirectionsSearchService $directionsSearchService)
{
$this->directionsSearchService = $directionsSearchService;
}
public function search()
{
return $this->directionsSearchService->search(Input::all());
}
}
With the code above, when Laravel tries to __construct() your controller, it will look for Services\Directions\DirectionsSearchService and injects into the controller for you automatically. In the constructor, we simply need to set it to an instance variable so your search() can use it when needed.
The second thing that you are missing is to register your classes with composer's autoload. Do this by adding to composer.json's autoload section:
"autoload": {
"classmap": [
... // Laravel's default classmap autoloads
],
"psr-4": {
"Services\\": "app/libraries/Services"
}
}
And do a composer dump-autoload after making changes to composer.json. And your code should be working again.
The suggestion above can also be better with a service provider and coding to the interface. It would make it easier to control what to inject into your controller, and hence easier to create and inject in a mock for testing.
It involves quite a few more steps so I won't mention that here, but you can read more in Exploring Laravel’s IoC container and Laravel 4 Controller Testing.