Inject grails application configuration into servi

Question

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 1

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();
    }
}

Answer 2

For contexts where you can't inject the grailsApplication bean (service is not one of those, as described by Jon Cram), for example a helper class located in src/groovy, you can access it using the Holders class:

def MyController {
   def myAction() {
      render grailsApplication == grails.util.Holders.grailsApplication
   }
}

Answer 3

Even though grailsApplication can be injected in services, I think services should not have to deal with configuration because it's harder to test and breaks the Single Responsibility principle. Spring, on the other side, can handle configuration and instantiation in a more robust way. Grails have a dedicated section in its docs.

To make your example work using Spring, you should register your service as a bean in resources.groovy

// Resources.groovy
import com.example.ExampleApiClient

beans {
    // Defines your bean, with constructor params
    exampleApiClient ExampleApiClient, 'baseUrl', 'username', 'password'
}

Then you will be able to inject the dependency into your service

class ExampleService {
    def exampleApiClient

    def relevantMethod(){
        exampleApiClient.action()
    }
}

In addition, in your Config.groovyfile, you can override any bean property using the Grails convention over configuration syntax: beans.<beanName>.<property>:

// Config.groovy
...
beans.exampleApiClient.baseUrl = 'http://example.org'

Both Config.groovy and resources.groovy supports different environment configuration.