• Definition
• Principles
• Rules
• Folder Structure
• Code Samples
• Register Service Providers
  • Container’s Main Service Provider
  • Container’s Additional Service Providers
  • Third party packages Service Providers
• Laravel 5.5 Auto Discovery feature.
• Information about Laravel Service Providers

Definition

Providers (are short names for Service Providers).
Providers are the central place of configuring and bootstrapping a Container.
They are the place where you register things like container bindings, event listeners, middleware, routes, other providers, aliases… to the framework service container.

Principles

• There are 2 types of Providers in a Container, the Main Provider and the Additional (Job Specific) Providers (EventsProvider, BroadcastsProvider, AuthProvider, MiddlewareProvider, RoutesProvider).
• A Container MAY have one or many Providers and MAY have no Provider at all.
• A Container CAN have only a single Main Provider.
• The Main Provider is where all the Job Specific Providers get registered.
• Third party packages Providers MUST be registered inside the Container Main service provider. (Same applies to Aliases).
• Providers CAN be registered on the Ship Main Provider, if they are general or are intended to be used by many containers. (Same applies to Aliases).

Rules

• The Main Provider will be auto registered by the Ship Engine, so no need to register it manually anywhere.
• All Main Providers MUST extend from App\Ship\Parents\Providers\MainProvider.
• All other types of Providers (EventsProvider, BroadcastsProvider, AuthProvider, MiddlewareProvider, RoutesProvider) must extend from their parent providers Ship/Parents/Providers/*.
• The Main Provider MUST be named MainServiceProvider in every container.
• You should not register any Provider in the framework (config/app.php), only the ApiatoProvider should be registered there.

Important Information: Laravel 5.5 introduces an auto-discovery feature that lets you automatically register ServiceProviders. Due to the nature and structure of Apiato applications, this features is turned off, because it messes up how config files are loaded in apiato. This means, that you still need to manually register 3rd-party ServiceProviders in the ServiceProvider of a Container.

Folder Structure

Example: User Container Service Providers

 - app
    - Containers
        - User
            - Providers
                - UserServiceProvider.php
                - EventsServiceProvider.php
                - ...

In this example above only the AuthServiceProvider and EventsServiceProvider needs to be registered in UserServiceProvider. While the UserServiceProvider will get automatically registered (since it’s named based on his Container name).

Code Samples

Main Service Provider Example:

<?php

namespace App\Containers\Excel\Providers;

use App\Ship\Parents\Providers\MainProvider;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\ExcelServiceProvider;
use Maatwebsite\Excel\Facades\Excel;

class MainServiceProvider extends MainProvider
{

    /**
     * Container Service Providers.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    public $serviceProviders = [
        // ...          
    ];

    /**
     * Container Aliases
     *
     * @var  array
     */
    public $aliases = [
        // ...
    ];

    /**
     * Register anything in the container.
     */
    public function register()
    {
        parent::register();

        $this->app->bind(UserRepositoryInterface::class, UserRepository::class);
    }
}

Note: when defining register() or boot() function in your Main provider “only” you must call the parent functions (parent::register(), parent::boot()) from your extended function.

Register Service Providers:

Container’s Main Service Provider

No need to register the Main Service Provider anywhere, it will be automatically registered, and it is responsible for registering all the Container Additional (Job Specific) Providers.

Container’s Main Service Provider

You MAY add as many Additional Service Providers as you want in a Container. However, in order to get them loaded in the framework you MUST register them all in the Main Service Provider as follow:

<?php

private $containerServiceProviders = [
    AuthServiceProvider::class,
    EventsServiceProvider::class,
    // ...
];
],

Same rule applies to Aliases.

Third party packages Service Providers

If a package requires registering its service provider in the config/app.php, you SHOULD register its service provider in the Main container where you are using it. However, if it’s a generic package used by the entire framework and not a specific Container or feature. Then you can register that service provider in the app/Ship/Providers/ShipProvider.php, but never in the config/app.php.

Laravel 5.5 Auto Discovery feature.

This feature is disabled in Apiato so far. More details here.

Information about Laravel Service Providers

By default Laravel provides some service providers in its app/providers directory. In apiato those providers have been renamed and moved to the Ship Layer app/Ship/Parents/Providers/*:

• AppServiceProvider
• RouteServiceProvider
• AuthServiceProvider
• BroadcastServiceProvider
• EventsServiceProvider

VIP Note: you should not touch those providers, instead you have to extend them from a containers providers in order to modify them. Example: the app/Containers/Authentication/Providers/AuthProvider.php is extending the AuthServiceProvider to modify it.
Those providers are not auto registered by default, thus writing any code there will not be available, unless you extend them. Once extended the child Provider should be registered in its Container Main Provider, which makes it’s parent available.
This rule does not apply to the RouteServiceProvider since it’s required by Apiato, this this Provider is registered by the ApiatoProvider.
Check How Service Providers are auto-loaded.