Dependency injection

In software engineering, dependency injection is a technique whereby one object supplies the dependencies of another object. A dependency is an object that can be used (a service). An injection is the passing of a dependency to a dependent object (a client) that would use it. The service is made part of the client's state. Passing the service to the client, rather than allowing a client to build or find the service, is the fundamental requirement of the pattern.

This fundamental requirement means that using values (services) produced within the class from new or static methods is prohibited. The class should accept values passed in from outside.

The intent behind dependency injection is to decouple objects to the extent that no client code has to be changed simply because an object it depends on needs to be changed to a different one.

Dependency injection is one form of the broader technique of inversion of control. Rather than low level code calling up to high level code, high level code can receive lower level code that it can call down to. This inverts the typical control pattern seen in procedural programming.

As with other forms of inversion of control, dependency injection supports the dependency inversion principle. The client delegates the responsibility of providing its dependencies to external code (the injector). The client is not allowed to call the injector code. It is the injecting code that constructs the services and calls the client to inject them. This means the client code does not need to know about the injecting code. The client does not need to know how to construct the services. The client does not need to know which actual services it is using. The client only needs to know about the intrinsic interfaces of the services because these define how the client may use the services. This separates the responsibilities of use and construction.

There are three common means for a client to accept a dependency injection: setter-, interface- and constructor-based injection. Setter and constructor injection differ mainly by when they can be used. Interface injection differs in that the dependency is given a chance to control its own injection. All require that separate construction code (the injector) take responsibility for introducing a client and its dependencies to each other.

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