I have the below code to do dependency injection using Guice. The first one is using constructor injection while the other one is adding #Inject directly above the field. Is there any difference between these two ways? It seems that constructor injection is recommended on the Guice official website.
class BillingService {
private final CreditCardProcessor processor;
private final TransactionLog transactionLog;
#Inject
BillingService(CreditCardProcessor processor, TransactionLog transactionLog) {
this.processor = processor;
this.transactionLog = transactionLog;
}
...
}
And:
class BillingService {
#Inject
private final CreditCardProcessor processor;
#Inject
private final TransactionLog transactionLog;
BillingService() {
}
...
}
The differences I would point:
without constructor injection you won't be able to use the final modifier, i.e. your code above won't compile. Commenting the advantages of final members is off-topic here.
with constructor injection all dependencies are kind of mandatory. You won't be able to instantiate the class without knowing about each declared dependency.
writing test cases with constructor injection might be easier (see the answer of The111).
there is another type of DI - setter injection - which can be more naturally mixed with constructor injection (e.g. for separating mandatory and optional dependencies).
Here's one difference. In the latter case, injection is the only way you can completely construct an instance of BillingService. If for whatever reason you need to build one without injection, you can't (using the methods shown, at least).
In the former case, you can still build one the old fashioned way, if you have some reason to want to do that:
new BillingService(someProcessor, someLog);
I've worked on one team that did it one way, and another that did it the other way. In most cases I used injection all the time, even for test. But every once in a while in a unit test I find it convenient to construct something the non-Guicy way, and in those cases the constructor injection does buy you that flexibility.
I have been looking for a while on the Internet about this but could not find an exact answer. Okay, they say inject an abstraction (interface or something) to a class rather than having it to create the instances it needs, or rather than passing an implementing type.
class Foo
{
private IBar _bar;
public Foo(Ibar bar)
{
_bar = bar;
}
}
Although I don't fully understand how above is reasonably loosely coupled, but my question at this point is about something else. That is, what if a method has to return an instance of something. How, for example, following can be made loosely coupled:
class Foo
{
public IBar GetMeSomething()
{
return new Bar(); // dependency here
}
}
I was just wondering how I resolve the above dependency on Bar? Any experienced programmers please help me understanding this. Or someone may be able to suggest some article comprehensively discussing all such scenarios that eliminate/reduce type inter-dependencies.
When a class need to know "Something" about your program, you can resolve that by passing a instance of another class in your constructor.
If you accept in constructors only interfaces instead of concrete classes you are later able to change implementation easily.
If you have to create Objects at run time you need factories, you class Foo is in your case a IBarFactory (because it instantiate IBars).
Dependencies in constructors via interfaces are easily resolved by any IoC framework (Factories are passed in constructors too), while the implementation of a factory itself is allowed to instantiate objects directly or through a IoC framework because that's the responsability of the class.
Using IoC containers and dependency injection does not make looscoupling happens for magic, you still have to model classes with SOLID principles in mind, but when using SOLID principles IoC containers and DI are of great help.
When a class implements an interface all we have to do is mock that interface.
However there are some cases when a class doesn't implement an interface, in that case binding the class to a mock leads guice to get the mocked object dependencies.
To clarify:
class A {
#Inject B;
}
class B{
#Inject C;
}
bind(a.class).toInstance(mock(B.class));
In this scenario, I don't care B's dependencies, but guice stills tries to inject C inside B.
Is there a way to avoid this without defining an interface?
First of all, I strongly recommend against using dependency injection in unit tests. When you're unit testing single class you should create it and pass its dependencies directly, through a constructor or methods. You won't have these problems then.
It's another story when you're writing integration tests though. There are several solutions to your problem.
Make sure all your classes receive dependencies only through injectable constructors. This way Guice won't inject anything because the object will be created by Mockito.
Use providers (and scoping, if needed). The following is equivalent to your attempt sans injection into B (I assume that you really meant bind(B.class).toInstance(mock(B.class)):
bind(B.class).toProvider(new Provider<B> {
#Override
public B get() {
return mock(B.class);
}
}).in(Singleton.class);
You should tweak the scope to satisfy your needs.
Using Mockito to partially solve this was quite easy.
You will need to use #Mock and #InjectMocks annotations like this
ATest{
#Mock B;
#InjectMocks A;
public void setUp(){
MockitoAnnotations.initMocks(this);
}
}
This way Mockito will do the inject instead of guice, there are a couple of restrictions to successfully inject the mock.
This works pretty well until your code have a strong dependency on a class.
Lets say inside A i have something like C obj = new C(); and C have injected fields.
I'm trying to understand dependency injections (DI), and once again I failed. It just seems silly. My code is never a mess; I hardly write virtual functions and interfaces (although I do once in a blue moon) and all my configuration is magically serialized into a class using json.net (sometimes using an XML serializer).
I don't quite understand what problem it solves. It looks like a way to say: "hi. When you run into this function, return an object that is of this type and uses these parameters/data."
But... why would I ever use that? Note I have never needed to use object as well, but I understand what that is for.
What are some real situations in either building a website or desktop application where one would use DI? I can come up with cases easily for why someone may want to use interfaces/virtual functions in a game, but it's extremely rare (rare enough that I can't remember a single instance) to use that in non-game code.
First, I want to explain an assumption that I make for this answer. It is not always true, but quite often:
Interfaces are adjectives; classes are nouns.
(Actually, there are interfaces that are nouns as well, but I want to generalize here.)
So, e.g. an interface may be something such as IDisposable, IEnumerable or IPrintable. A class is an actual implementation of one or more of these interfaces: List or Map may both be implementations of IEnumerable.
To get the point: Often your classes depend on each other. E.g. you could have a Database class which accesses your database (hah, surprise! ;-)), but you also want this class to do logging about accessing the database. Suppose you have another class Logger, then Database has a dependency to Logger.
So far, so good.
You can model this dependency inside your Database class with the following line:
var logger = new Logger();
and everything is fine. It is fine up to the day when you realize that you need a bunch of loggers: Sometimes you want to log to the console, sometimes to the file system, sometimes using TCP/IP and a remote logging server, and so on ...
And of course you do NOT want to change all your code (meanwhile you have gazillions of it) and replace all lines
var logger = new Logger();
by:
var logger = new TcpLogger();
First, this is no fun. Second, this is error-prone. Third, this is stupid, repetitive work for a trained monkey. So what do you do?
Obviously it's a quite good idea to introduce an interface ICanLog (or similar) that is implemented by all the various loggers. So step 1 in your code is that you do:
ICanLog logger = new Logger();
Now the type inference doesn't change type any more, you always have one single interface to develop against. The next step is that you do not want to have new Logger() over and over again. So you put the reliability to create new instances to a single, central factory class, and you get code such as:
ICanLog logger = LoggerFactory.Create();
The factory itself decides what kind of logger to create. Your code doesn't care any longer, and if you want to change the type of logger being used, you change it once: Inside the factory.
Now, of course, you can generalize this factory, and make it work for any type:
ICanLog logger = TypeFactory.Create<ICanLog>();
Somewhere this TypeFactory needs configuration data which actual class to instantiate when a specific interface type is requested, so you need a mapping. Of course you can do this mapping inside your code, but then a type change means recompiling. But you could also put this mapping inside an XML file, e.g.. This allows you to change the actually used class even after compile time (!), that means dynamically, without recompiling!
To give you a useful example for this: Think of a software that does not log normally, but when your customer calls and asks for help because he has a problem, all you send to him is an updated XML config file, and now he has logging enabled, and your support can use the log files to help your customer.
And now, when you replace names a little bit, you end up with a simple implementation of a Service Locator, which is one of two patterns for Inversion of Control (since you invert control over who decides what exact class to instantiate).
All in all this reduces dependencies in your code, but now all your code has a dependency to the central, single service locator.
Dependency injection is now the next step in this line: Just get rid of this single dependency to the service locator: Instead of various classes asking the service locator for an implementation for a specific interface, you - once again - revert control over who instantiates what.
With dependency injection, your Database class now has a constructor that requires a parameter of type ICanLog:
public Database(ICanLog logger) { ... }
Now your database always has a logger to use, but it does not know any more where this logger comes from.
And this is where a DI framework comes into play: You configure your mappings once again, and then ask your DI framework to instantiate your application for you. As the Application class requires an ICanPersistData implementation, an instance of Database is injected - but for that it must first create an instance of the kind of logger which is configured for ICanLog. And so on ...
So, to cut a long story short: Dependency injection is one of two ways of how to remove dependencies in your code. It is very useful for configuration changes after compile-time, and it is a great thing for unit testing (as it makes it very easy to inject stubs and / or mocks).
In practice, there are things you can not do without a service locator (e.g., if you do not know in advance how many instances you do need of a specific interface: A DI framework always injects only one instance per parameter, but you can call a service locator inside a loop, of course), hence most often each DI framework also provides a service locator.
But basically, that's it.
P.S.: What I described here is a technique called constructor injection, there is also property injection where not constructor parameters, but properties are being used for defining and resolving dependencies. Think of property injection as an optional dependency, and of constructor injection as mandatory dependencies. But discussion on this is beyond the scope of this question.
I think a lot of times people get confused about the difference between dependency injection and a dependency injection framework (or a container as it is often called).
Dependency injection is a very simple concept. Instead of this code:
public class A {
private B b;
public A() {
this.b = new B(); // A *depends on* B
}
public void DoSomeStuff() {
// Do something with B here
}
}
public static void Main(string[] args) {
A a = new A();
a.DoSomeStuff();
}
you write code like this:
public class A {
private B b;
public A(B b) { // A now takes its dependencies as arguments
this.b = b; // look ma, no "new"!
}
public void DoSomeStuff() {
// Do something with B here
}
}
public static void Main(string[] args) {
B b = new B(); // B is constructed here instead
A a = new A(b);
a.DoSomeStuff();
}
And that's it. Seriously. This gives you a ton of advantages. Two important ones are the ability to control functionality from a central place (the Main() function) instead of spreading it throughout your program, and the ability to more easily test each class in isolation (because you can pass mocks or other faked objects into its constructor instead of a real value).
The drawback, of course, is that you now have one mega-function that knows about all the classes used by your program. That's what DI frameworks can help with. But if you're having trouble understanding why this approach is valuable, I'd recommend starting with manual dependency injection first, so you can better appreciate what the various frameworks out there can do for you.
As the other answers stated, dependency injection is a way to create your dependencies outside of the class that uses it. You inject them from the outside, and take control about their creation away from the inside of your class. This is also why dependency injection is a realization of the Inversion of control (IoC) principle.
IoC is the principle, where DI is the pattern. The reason that you might "need more than one logger" is never actually met, as far as my experience goes, but the actually reason is, that you really need it, whenever you test something. An example:
My Feature:
When I look at an offer, I want to mark that I looked at it automatically, so that I don't forget to do so.
You might test this like this:
[Test]
public void ShouldUpdateTimeStamp
{
// Arrange
var formdata = { . . . }
// System under Test
var weasel = new OfferWeasel();
// Act
var offer = weasel.Create(formdata)
// Assert
offer.LastUpdated.Should().Be(new DateTime(2013,01,13,13,01,0,0));
}
So somewhere in the OfferWeasel, it builds you an offer Object like this:
public class OfferWeasel
{
public Offer Create(Formdata formdata)
{
var offer = new Offer();
offer.LastUpdated = DateTime.Now;
return offer;
}
}
The problem here is, that this test will most likely always fail, since the date that is being set will differ from the date being asserted, even if you just put DateTime.Now in the test code it might be off by a couple of milliseconds and will therefore always fail. A better solution now would be to create an interface for this, that allows you to control what time will be set:
public interface IGotTheTime
{
DateTime Now {get;}
}
public class CannedTime : IGotTheTime
{
public DateTime Now {get; set;}
}
public class ActualTime : IGotTheTime
{
public DateTime Now {get { return DateTime.Now; }}
}
public class OfferWeasel
{
private readonly IGotTheTime _time;
public OfferWeasel(IGotTheTime time)
{
_time = time;
}
public Offer Create(Formdata formdata)
{
var offer = new Offer();
offer.LastUpdated = _time.Now;
return offer;
}
}
The Interface is the abstraction. One is the REAL thing, and the other one allows you to fake some time where it is needed. The test can then be changed like this:
[Test]
public void ShouldUpdateTimeStamp
{
// Arrange
var date = new DateTime(2013, 01, 13, 13, 01, 0, 0);
var formdata = { . . . }
var time = new CannedTime { Now = date };
// System under test
var weasel= new OfferWeasel(time);
// Act
var offer = weasel.Create(formdata)
// Assert
offer.LastUpdated.Should().Be(date);
}
Like this, you applied the "inversion of control" principle, by injecting a dependency (getting the current time). The main reason to do this is for easier isolated unit testing, there are other ways of doing it. For example, an interface and a class here is unnecessary since in C# functions can be passed around as variables, so instead of an interface you could use a Func<DateTime> to achieve the same. Or, if you take a dynamic approach, you just pass any object that has the equivalent method (duck typing), and you don't need an interface at all.
You will hardly ever need more than one logger. Nonetheless, dependency injection is essential for statically typed code such as Java or C#.
And...
It should also be noted that an object can only properly fulfill its purpose at runtime, if all its dependencies are available, so there is not much use in setting up property injection. In my opinion, all dependencies should be satisfied when the constructor is being called, so constructor-injection is the thing to go with.
I think the classic answer is to create a more decoupled application, which has no knowledge of which implementation will be used during runtime.
For example, we're a central payment provider, working with many payment providers around the world. However, when a request is made, I have no idea which payment processor I'm going to call. I could program one class with a ton of switch cases, such as:
class PaymentProcessor{
private String type;
public PaymentProcessor(String type){
this.type = type;
}
public void authorize(){
if (type.equals(Consts.PAYPAL)){
// Do this;
}
else if(type.equals(Consts.OTHER_PROCESSOR)){
// Do that;
}
}
}
Now imagine that now you'll need to maintain all this code in a single class because it's not decoupled properly, you can imagine that for every new processor you'll support, you'll need to create a new if // switch case for every method, this only gets more complicated, however, by using Dependency Injection (or Inversion of Control - as it's sometimes called, meaning that whoever controls the running of the program is known only at runtime, and not complication), you could achieve something very neat and maintainable.
class PaypalProcessor implements PaymentProcessor{
public void authorize(){
// Do PayPal authorization
}
}
class OtherProcessor implements PaymentProcessor{
public void authorize(){
// Do other processor authorization
}
}
class PaymentFactory{
public static PaymentProcessor create(String type){
switch(type){
case Consts.PAYPAL;
return new PaypalProcessor();
case Consts.OTHER_PROCESSOR;
return new OtherProcessor();
}
}
}
interface PaymentProcessor{
void authorize();
}
** The code won't compile, I know :)
The main reason to use DI is that you want to put the responsibility of the knowledge of the implementation where the knowledge is there. The idea of DI is very much inline with encapsulation and design by interface.
If the front end asks from the back end for some data, then is it unimportant for the front end how the back end resolves that question. That is up to the requesthandler.
That is already common in OOP for a long time. Many times creating code pieces like:
I_Dosomething x = new Impl_Dosomething();
The drawback is that the implementation class is still hardcoded, hence has the front end the knowledge which implementation is used. DI takes the design by interface one step further, that the only thing the front end needs to know is the knowledge of the interface.
In between the DYI and DI is the pattern of a service locator, because the front end has to provide a key (present in the registry of the service locator) to lets its request become resolved.
Service locator example:
I_Dosomething x = ServiceLocator.returnDoing(String pKey);
DI example:
I_Dosomething x = DIContainer.returnThat();
One of the requirements of DI is that the container must be able to find out which class is the implementation of which interface. Hence does a DI container require strongly typed design and only one implementation for each interface at the same time. If you need more implementations of an interface at the same time (like a calculator), you need the service locator or factory design pattern.
D(b)I: Dependency Injection and Design by Interface.
This restriction is not a very big practical problem though. The benefit of using D(b)I is that it serves communication between the client and the provider. An interface is a perspective on an object or a set of behaviours. The latter is crucial here.
I prefer the administration of service contracts together with D(b)I in coding. They should go together. The use of D(b)I as a technical solution without organizational administration of service contracts is not very beneficial in my point of view, because DI is then just an extra layer of encapsulation. But when you can use it together with organizational administration you can really make use of the organizing principle D(b)I offers.
It can help you in the long run to structure communication with the client and other technical departments in topics as testing, versioning and the development of alternatives. When you have an implicit interface as in a hardcoded class, then is it much less communicable over time then when you make it explicit using D(b)I. It all boils down to maintenance, which is over time and not at a time. :-)
Quite frankly, I believe people use these Dependency Injection libraries/frameworks because they just know how to do things in runtime, as opposed to load time. All this crazy machinery can be substituted by setting your CLASSPATH environment variable (or other language equivalent, like PYTHONPATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH) to point to your alternative implementations (all with the same name) of a particular class. So in the accepted answer you'd just leave your code like
var logger = new Logger() //sane, simple code
And the appropriate logger will be instantiated because the JVM (or whatever other runtime or .so loader you have) would fetch it from the class configured via the environment variable mentioned above.
No need to make everything an interface, no need to have the insanity of spawning broken objects to have stuff injected into them, no need to have insane constructors with every piece of internal machinery exposed to the world. Just use the native functionality of whatever language you're using instead of coming up with dialects that won't work in any other project.
P.S.: This is also true for testing/mocking. You can very well just set your environment to load the appropriate mock class, in load time, and skip the mocking framework madness.
I have a question regarding dependency injection pattern.
My question is...
If I go for constructor injection, injecting the dependencies for my class, what I get is a "big" constructor with many params.
What if ie. I dont use some of the params in some methods?
Ie. I have a service that exposes many methods. And a constructor with 10 parameters (all dependencies). But not all the methods uses all the dependencies. Some method will use only one dependency, another will use 3 dependencies. But DI container will resolve them all even if non are used.
To me this is a performance penalty of using DI container. Is this true?
It seems your class is doing to much, that it does not comply to the S in SOLID (Single responsibility principle) , maybe you could split the class in multiple smaller classes with less dependencies. The fact that not all dependencies are used by all methods suggests this.
Normally the performance penalty of injecting many dependencies is low, but it depends on the framework you pick. Some will compile methods for this on the fly. You will have to test this. Many dependencies does indicate that your class is doing too much (like Ruben said), so you might want to take a look at that. If creation of an instance of a depedency that you often don't use causes performance problems, you might want to introduce a factory as dependency. I found that the use of factories can solve many problems regarding the use of dependency injection frameworks.
// Constructor
public Consumer(IContextFactory contextFactory)
{
this.contextFactory = contextFactory;
}
public void DoSomething()
{
var context = this.contextFactory.CreateNew();
try
{
// use context here
context.Commit();
}
finally
{
context.Dispose();
}
}
You can also hide some not-yet-needed dependencies behind lazy providers. For instance:
public DataSourceProvider implements Provider<DataSource> {
public DataSource get() {
return lazyGetDataSource();
}
}
The Provider interface is part of javax.inject package.
Actually you can't know which methods are used at runtime when you build your DI container. You would have to deal with that performance penalty or if you know that there are many cases where just a few dependencies are used, you could split your container into several small containers that have less dependencies that are injected.
As rube Says probabily you should review te design of your class to stick to SOLID principles.
Anyway if it is not really necessary I'm used to go for property setter dependency insteadof the constructor. It means that you can create a property for each dependecy you need. That helps also to test the class because you can inject only the dependency you need into the context of the test you are doing instead of stub out all the dependency even if you don't need it