Dependency Container

Slim uses a dependency container to prepare, manage, and inject application dependencies. Slim supports containers that implement the Container-Interop interface. You can use Slim’s built-in container (based on Pimple) or third-party containers like Acclimate or PHP-DI.

How to use the container

You don’t have to provide a dependency container. If you do, however, you must inject the container instance into the Slim application’s constructor.

$container = new SlimContainer;
$app = new SlimApp($container);

You can fetch services from your container explicitly or implicitly. You can fetch an explicit reference to the container instance from inside a Slim application route like this:

/**
 * Example GET route
 *
 * @param  PsrHttpMessageServerRequestInterface $req  PSR7 request
 * @param  PsrHttpMessageResponseInterface      $res  PSR7 response
 * @param  array                                    $args Route parameters
 *
 * @return PsrHttpMessageResponseInterface
 */
$app->get("/foo", function ($req, $res, $args) {
    $container = $this->getContainer();
    $myService = $container->get("myService");

    return $res;
});

You can implicitly fetch services from the container like this:

/**
 * Example GET route
 *
 * @param  PsrHttpMessageServerRequestInterface $req  PSR7 request
 * @param  PsrHttpMessageResponseInterface      $res  PSR7 response
 * @param  array                                    $args Route parameters
 *
 * @return PsrHttpMessageResponseInterface
 */
$app->get("/foo", function ($req, $res, $args) {
    $myService = $this->myService;

    return $res;
});

Slim uses __get() and __isset() magic methods that defer to the application’s container for all properties that do not already exist on the application instance.

Required services

Your container MUST implement these required services. If you use Slim’s built-in container, these are provided for you. If you choose a third-party container, you must define these required services on your own.

settings

Associative array of application settings, including keys httpVersion, outputBuffering,responseChunkSize and determineRouteBeforeAppMiddleware.

environment

Instance of SlimInterfacesHttpEnvironmentInterface.

request

Instance of PsrHttpMessageServerRequestInterface.

response

Instance of PsrHttpMessageResponseInterface.

router

Instance of SlimInterfacesRouterInterface.

foundHandler

Instance of SlimInterfacesInvocationStrategyInterface.

errorHandler

Callable invoked if application error. The callable MUST return an instance ofPsrHttpMessageResponseInterface and accept three arguments:

1. PsrHttpMessageServerRequestInterface
2. PsrHttpMessageResponseInterface
3. Exception

notFoundHandler

Callable invoked if the current HTTP request URI does not match an application route. The callable MUST return an instance of PsrHttpMessageResponseInterface and accept two arguments:

1. PsrHttpMessageServerRequestInterface
2. PsrHttpMessageResponseInterface

notAllowedHandler

Callable invoked if an application route matches the current HTTP request path but not its method. The callable MUST return an instance of PsrHttpMessageResponseInterfaceand accept three arguments:

1. PsrHttpMessageServerRequestInterface
2. PsrHttpMessageResponseInterface
3. Array of allowed HTTP methods