Zend\Di InstanceManager

The InstanceManager is responsible for any runtime information associated with the Zend\Di\Di DiC. This means that the information that goes into the instance manager is specific to both how the particular consuming Application’s needs and even more specifically to the environment in which the application is running.

Parameters

Parameters are simply entry points for either dependencies or instance configuration values. A class consists of a set of parameters, each uniquely named. When writing your classes, you should attempt to not use the same parameter name twice in the same class when you expect that that parameters is used for either instance configuration or an object dependency. This leads to an ambiguous parameter, and is a situation best avoided.

Our movie finder example can be further used to explain these concepts:

namespace MyLibrary
{
    class DbAdapter
    {
        protected $username = null;
        protected $password = null;
        public function __construct($username, $password)
        {
            $this->username = $username;
            $this->password = $password;
        }
    }
}

namespace MyMovieApp
{
    class MovieFinder
    {
        protected $dbAdapter = null;
        public function __construct(\MyLibrary\DbAdapter $dbAdapter)
        {
            $this->dbAdapter = $dbAdapter;
        }
    }

    class MovieLister
    {
        protected $movieFinder = null;
        public function __construct(MovieFinder $movieFinder)
        {
            $this->movieFinder = $movieFinder;
        }
    }
}

In the above example, the class DbAdapter has 2 parameters: username and password; MovieFinder has one parameter: dbAdapter, and MovieLister has one parameter: movieFinder. Any of these can be utilized for injection of either dependencies or scalar values during instance configuration or during call time.

When looking at the above code, since the dbAdapter parameter and the movieFinder parameter are both type-hinted with concrete types, the DiC can assume that it can fulfill these object tendencies by itself. On the other hand, username and password do not have type-hints and are, more than likely, scalar in nature. Since the DiC cannot reasonably know this information, it must be provided to the instance manager in the form of parameters. Not doing so will force $di->get(‘MyMovieApp\MovieLister’) to throw an exception.

The following ways of using parameters are available:

// setting instance configuration into the instance manager
$di->instanceManager()->setParameters('MyLibrary\DbAdapter', array(
    'username' => 'myusername',
    'password' => 'mypassword'
));

// forcing a particular dependency to be used by the instance manager
$di->instanceManager()->setParameters('MyMovieApp\MovieFinder', array(
    'dbAdapter' => new MyLibrary\DbAdapter('myusername', 'mypassword')
));

// passing instance parameters at call time
$movieLister = $di->get('MyMovieApp\MovieLister', array(
    'username' => $config->username,
    'password' => $config->password
));

// passing a specific instance at call time
$movieLister = $di->get('MyMovieApp\MovieLister', array(
    'dbAdapter' => new MyLibrary\DbAdapter('myusername', 'mypassword')
));

Preferences

In some cases, you might be using interfaces as type hints as opposed to concrete types. Lets assume the movie example was modified in the following way:

namespace MyMovieApp
{
    interface MovieFinderInterface
    {
        // methods required for this type
    }

    class GenericMovieFinder implements MovieFinderInterface
    {
        protected $dbAdapter = null;
        public function __construct(\MyLibrary\DbAdapter $dbAdapter)
        {
            $this->dbAdapter = $dbAdapter;
        }
    }

    class MovieLister
    {
        protected $movieFinder = null;
        public function __construct(MovieFinderInterface $movieFinder)
        {
            $this->movieFinder = $movieFinder;
        }
    }
}

What you’ll notice above is that now the MovieLister type minimally expects that the dependency injected implements the MovieFinderInterface. This allows multiple implementations of this base interface to be used as a dependency, if that is what the consumer decides they want to do. As you can imagine, Zend\Di, by itself would not be able to determine what kind of concrete object to use fulfill this dependency, so this type of ‘preference’ needs to be made known to the instance manager.

To give this information to the instance manager, see the following code example:

$di->instanceManager()->addTypePreference('MyMovieApp\MovieFinderInterface', 'MyMovieApp\GenericMovieFinder');
// assuming all instance config for username, password is setup
$di->get('MyMovieApp\MovieLister');

Aliases

In some situations, you’ll find that you need to alias an instance. There are two main reasons to do this. First, it creates a simpler, alternative name to use when using the DiC, as opposed to using the full class name. Second, you might find that you need to have the same object type in two separate contexts. This means that when you alias a particular class, you can then attach a specific instance configuration to that alias; as opposed to attaching that configuration to the class name.

To demonstrate both of these points, we’ll look at a use case where we’ll have two separate DbAdapters, one will be for read-only operations, the other will be for read-write operations:

Note

Aliases can also have parameters registered at alias time

// assume the MovieLister example of code from the QuickStart

$im = $di->instanceManager();

// add alias for short naming
$im->addAlias('movielister', 'MyMovieApp\MovieLister');

// add aliases for specific instances
$im->addAlias('dbadapter-readonly', 'MyLibrary\DbAdapter', array(
    'username' => $config->db->readAdapter->username,
    'password' => $config->db->readAdapter->password,
));
$im->addAlias('dbadapter-readwrite', 'MyLibrary\DbAdapter', array(
    'username' => $config->db->readWriteAdapter->username,
    'password' => $config->db->readWriteAdapter->password,
));

// set a default type to use, pointing to an alias
$im->addTypePreference('MyLibrary\DbAdapter', 'dbadapter-readonly');

$movieListerRead = $di->get('MyMovieApp\MovieLister');
$movieListerReadWrite = $di->get('MyMovieApp\MovieLister', array('dbAdapter' => 'dbadapter-readwrite'));