Add documentation about service decoration

romainneutron · weaverryan · commit e6bc038e2a61 · 2014-05-29T07:50:15.000-05:00
diff --git a/components/dependency_injection/advanced.rst b/components/dependency_injection/advanced.rst
@@ -185,3 +185,95 @@ the service itself gets loaded. To do so, you can use the ``file`` directive.
 
 Notice that Symfony will internally call the PHP statement ``require_once``,
 which means that your file will be included only once per request.
+
+Decorating Services
+-------------------
+
+.. versionadded:: 2.5
+    Decorated services were introduced in Symfony 2.5.
+
+When overriding an existing definition, the old service is lost:
+
+.. code-block:: php
+
+    $container->register('foo', 'FooService');
+
+    // this is going to replace the old definition with the new one
+    // old definition is lost
+    $container->register('foo', 'CustomFooService');
+
+Most of the time, that's exactly what you want to do. But sometimes,
+you might want to decorate the old one instead. In this case, the
+old service should be kept around to be able to reference it in the
+new one. This configuration replaces ``foo`` with a new one, but keeps
+a reference of the old one  as ``bar.inner``:
+
+.. configuration-block::
+
+    .. code-block:: yaml
+
+       bar:
+         public: false
+         class: stdClass
+         decorates: foo
+         arguments: ["@bar.inner"]
+
+    .. code-block:: xml
+
+        <service id="bar" class="stdClass" decorates="foo" public="false">
+            <argument type="service" id="bar.inner" />
+        </service>
+
+    .. code-block:: php
+
+        use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Reference;
+
+        $container->register('bar', 'stdClass')
+            ->addArgument(new Reference('bar.inner'))
+            ->setPublic(false)
+            ->setDecoratedService('foo');
+
+Here is what's going on here: the ``setDecoratedService()` method tells
+the container that the ``bar`` service should replace the ``foo`` service,
+renaming ``foo`` to ``bar.inner``.
+By convention, the old ``foo`` service is going to be renamed ``bar.inner``,
+so you can inject it into your new service.
+
+.. note::
+    The generated inner id is based on the id of the decorator service
+    (``bar`` here), not of the decorated service (``foo`` here).  This is
+    mandatory to allow several decorators on the same service (they need to have
+    different generated inner ids).
+
+    Most of the time, the decorator should be declared private, as you will not
+    need to retrieve it as ``bar`` from the container. The visibility of the
+    decorated ``foo`` service (which is an alias for ``bar``) will still be the
+    same as the original ``foo`` visibility.
+
+You can change the inner service name if you want to:
+
+.. configuration-block::
+
+    .. code-block:: yaml
+
+       bar:
+         class: stdClass
+         public: false
+         decorates: foo
+         decoration_inner_name: bar.wooz
+         arguments: ["@bar.wooz"]
+
+    .. code-block:: xml
+
+        <service id="bar" class="stdClass" decorates="foo" decoration-inner-name="bar.wooz" public="false">
+            <argument type="service" id="bar.wooz" />
+        </service>
+
+    .. code-block:: php
+
+        use Symfony\Component\DependencyInjection\Reference;
+
+        $container->register('bar', 'stdClass')
+            ->addArgument(new Reference('bar.wooz'))
+            ->setPublic(false)
+            ->setDecoratedService('foo', 'bar.wooz');
