How to Make Service Arguments/References Optional

Sometimes, one of your services may have an optional dependency, meaning that the dependency is not required for your service to work properly. You can configure the container to not throw an error in this case.

Setting Missing Dependencies to null

You can use the null strategy to explicitly set the argument to null if the service does not exist:

  • XML
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    <!-- config/services.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
        https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">

    <services>
        <!-- ... -->

        <service id="App\Newsletter\NewsletterManager">
            <argument type="service" id="logger" on-invalid="null"/>
        </service>
    </services>
</container>
  • PHP
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    // config/services.php
namespace Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Loader\Configurator;

use App\Newsletter\NewsletterManager;

return function(ContainerConfigurator $configurator) {
    $services = $configurator->services();

    $services->set(NewsletterManager::class)
        // In versions earlier to Symfony 5.1 the service() function was called ref()
        ->args([service('logger')->nullOnInvalid()]);
};

Note

The “null” strategy is not currently supported by the YAML driver.

Ignoring Missing Dependencies

The behavior of ignoring missing dependencies is the same as the “null” behavior except when used within a method call, in which case the method call itself will be removed.

In the following example the container will inject a service using a method call if the service exists and remove the method call if it does not:

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    # config/services.yaml
services:
    App\Newsletter\NewsletterManager:
        calls:
            - [setLogger, ['@?logger']]
  • XML
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    <!-- config/services.xml -->
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<container xmlns="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://symfony.com/schema/dic/services
        https://symfony.com/schema/dic/services/services-1.0.xsd">

    <services>
        <service id="App\Newsletter\NewsletterManager">
            <call method="setLogger">
                <argument type="service" id="logger" on-invalid="ignore"/>
            </call>
        </service>
    </services>
</container>
  • PHP
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    // config/services.php
namespace Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Loader\Configurator;

use App\Newsletter\NewsletterManager;

return function(ContainerConfigurator $configurator) {
    $services = $configurator->services();

    $services->set(NewsletterManager::class)
        ->call('setLogger', [service('logger')->ignoreOnInvalid()])
    ;
};

Note

If the argument to the method call is a collection of arguments and any of them is missing, those elements are removed but the method call is still made with the remaining elements of the collection.

In YAML, the special @? syntax tells the service container that the dependency is optional. The NewsletterManager must also be rewritten by adding a setLogger() method:

public function setLogger(LoggerInterface $logger)
{
    // ...
}