Binding Configured Services to Laravel’s Container

Laravel’s service container is one of its most helpful features. It allows developers to type-hint dependencies in their classes, and automatically get a properly-configured class instance injected. It’s therefore disheartening to not see developers take full advantage of it when working with third-party APIs and SDKs.

One common approach I see in Laravel applications is developers new-ing up instances of SDKs like this:

$client = new \Nexmo\Client(
    new \Nexmo\Client\Credentials\Basic(
        config('services.nexmo.key'),
        config('services.nexmo.secret')
    )
);

This is fine in one place, but this SDK maybe instantiated in multiple places (controllers, console commands, jobs etc).

Instead, the SDK could be added to the service container, so that when classes request an instance of Nexmo\Client, they get an instance with the credentials already configured.

Services are added to the service container in Laravel via service providers. Providers have two lifecycle methods: register and boot. The register method is where you should add bindings to the service container. The boot method is for performing actions after all service providers have registered their services.

Nexmo is a service, so it makes a perfect candidate for a service provider. I tend to create service providers for all third-party libraries I’m working with (Nexmo, Facebook, Stripe etc). We can use Artisan to generate a new service provider class for us:

php artisan make:provider NexmoServiceProvider

This creates a file at app/Providers/NexmoServiceProvider.php. We can remove the boot method, but we do need to flesh out the register method:

namespace App\Providers;

use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;
use Nexmo\Client;
use Nexmo\Client\Credentials\Basic;

class NexmoServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    public function register()
    {
        $this->app->singleton(Client::class, function () {
            return new Client(
                new Basic(
                    $this->app['config']['services.nexmo.key'],
                    $this->app['config']['services.nexmo.secret']
                )
            );
        });
    }
}

Binding a singleton means that the first time Nexmo\Client is requested, a new instance is created, and any subsequent requests for Nexmo\Client yields the same instance instead of instantiating a new instance.

Next, we need our service provider to designate that it provides the Nexmo\Client class. Add this method to the bottom of the class:

public function provides()
{
    return [
        Client::class,
    ];
}

Finally, register the service provider by adding it to the providers array in your Laravel application’s config/app.php file:

/**
 * Application Service Providers...
 */
// ...
App\Providers\NexmoServiceProvider::class,

Now you can type-hint Nexmo\Client in your classes, and begin using it straight away!

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Nexmo\Client as NexmoClient;

class SmsMessageController extends Controller
{
    protected $nexmo;

    public function __construct(NexmoClient $nexmo)
    {
        $this->nexmo = $nexmo;
    }

    public function store(Request $request)
    {
        $response = $this->nexmo->message()->send([
            'from' => config('services.nexmo.from'),
            'text' => $request->input('text'),
            'to' => $request->input('recipient'),
        ]);

        // Rest of your controller action...
    }
}