Inject grails application configuration into service

Jon Cram picture Jon Cram · Feb 11, 2011 · Viewed 25.5k times · Source

I'm creating a grails service that will interact with a 3rd party REST API via a Java library. The Java library requires credentials for the REST API by means of a url, username and password.

I'd like to store these credentials in configuration/Config.groovy, make them available to a service and ensure that credentials are available to the service before it requires them.

I appreciate that grailsApplication.config is available to controllers and that through a method of a service the relevant config values can be provided to the service, such as this:

package example

class ExampleController {

    def exampleService

    def index = { }

    def process = {
        exampleService.setCredentials(grailsApplication.config.apiCredentials)
        exampleService.relevantMethod()
    }
}


package example

import com.example.ExampleApiClient;

class ExampleService {

    def credentials

    def setCredentials(credentials) {
        this.credentials = credentials
    }

    def relevantMethod() {

        def client = new ExampleApiClient(
            credentials.baseUrl,
            credentials.username,
            credentials.password
        )

        return client.action();
    }
}

I feel this approach is slightly flawed as it depends on a controller calling setCredentials(). Having the credentials made available to the service automagically would be more robust.

Is either of these two options viable (I currently not familiar enough with grails):

  1. Inject grailsApplication.config.apiCredentials into the service in the controller when the service is created?

  2. Provide some form of contructor on the service that allows the credentials to be passed in to the service at instantiation time?

Having the credentials injected into the service is ideal. How could this be done?

Answer

Jon Cram picture Jon Cram · Feb 11, 2011

The grailsApplication object is available within services, allowing this:

package example

import com.example.ExampleApiClient;

class ExampleService {

    def grailsApplication

    def relevantMethod() {

        def client = new ExampleApiClient(
            grailsApplication.config.apiCredentials.baseUrl
            grailsApplication.config.apiCredentials.username,
            grailsApplication.config.apiCredentials.password
        )

        return client.action();
    }
}