Laravel - Defining repository overrides - php

Question

I am using Laravel 5.1 and have set up a Repository pattern. I have the concrete implementations of my repos injected into my controllers. I realize that your SUPPOSED to inject the interface but that over complicates my API and doesn't solve my issue. I have a client config that simply contains a string such as '' and I am already using that globally to use model overrides if they exist.
So, for example, if I have client 'yahoo' and they have an override in my Overrides/Yahoo/Models/User.php then it will use this User.php. Whether its an extension of the base User model or a whole new implementation is up to me.
I am trying to do the same thing for my repositories. I want to be able to put an override file in Overrides/Yahoo/Repos/UserRepository.php and on injection it will either use the base User repository or the override if it exists.
Any ideas of how I can accomplish this? I realize that you can inject a repository interface and use a binding but I want to do this globally. If you can tell me how I can abstract that functionality to automatically bind the correct implementation of the interface based on client config I would accept that.

Answer 1

You can resolve your concrete implementation by the configuration you use, but it requires that you use interfaces.
Example configuration (config/client.php):
<?php
return [
'users' => [
'repository' => \App\Overrides\Yahoo\Repos\UserRepository::class,
],
];
In your AppServiceProviders register method:
/**
* Register any application services.
*
* #return void
*/
public function register()
{
$this->app->bind(
UserRepositoryInterface::class,
config('client.users.repository')
);
}
In your Yahoo UserRepository, you can then inject the Yahoo User model directly:
<?php
namespace App\Overrides\Yahoo\Repos;
use App\Repos\UserRepositoryInterface;
use App\Overrides\Yahoo\Models\User;
class UserRepository implements UserRepositoryInterface
{
private $user;
public function __construct(User $user)
{
$this->user = $user;
}
// TODO: Implement UserRepositoryInterface methods
}
Finally, in your UserController you can inject the UserRepositoryInterface and it will bind the concrete implementation based on your configuration:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use App\Repos\UserRepositoryInterface;
class UserController extends Controller
{
private $users;
public function __construct(UserRepositoryInterface $users)
{
$this->users = $users;
}
}
It might seem overkill at first, but once you set up everything it's pretty easy to add new overrides.
You could even create a base concrete implementation of the UserRepository and make every override repository inherit from it. This way you don't have to re-implement all methods required by the interface, but you stay flexible when the user repositories use different database technologies (SQL, MondoDB...)