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RuntimeConfigBundle

This bundle provides a way to inject parameters into services at runtime by exposing a RuntimeParameterBag service, which functions exactly like Symfony2's own ParameterBags.

As-is, Symfony2's service container is compiled and cached to disk, which makes it difficult to inject dynamic parameters. By exposing a ParameterBag service, we can inject values returned from its get() method into other services.

One reason you might want support for dynamic parameters would be to implement feature flags/flippers, as are used by GitHub and Flickr. More info on the history behind this bundle may be found on the symfony-devs mailing list.

Installation

Step 1: Download OpenSkyRuntimeConfigBundle using composer:

Require the bundle with composer:

Step 2: Enable the bundle

Enable the bundle in the kernel:

Step 3: Configure your application's config.yml

The RuntimeParameterBag may be configured with the following:

These settings are explained below:

• provider: A service implementing ParameterProviderInterface. If you are using Doctrine ORM as your datasource, this could be an EntityRepository.
• cascade: If true, calls to get() will cascade to the service container when the parameter is undefined in the runtime configuration. This will not change the behavior of has() or all(), which always only consider parameters from the runtime configuration provider.
• logging.enabled: Whether to enable logging access to undefined parameters, regardless of whether service container cascading is enabled. If you are using Monolog, logs will be sent to the "opensky.runtime_config" channel.
• logging.level: Log level to use (should be a LoggerInterface method).

Note: when using cascade, it's a good idea to define default values for your runtime configuration parameters in your service container. This will help avoid an undesirable ParameterNotFoundException if you happen to fetch a parameter that is not yet defined in your runtime configuration.

Injecting Parameters

Consider the scenario where "my.service" depends on a dynamic parameter "my.service.enabled".

Runtime parameters may be conveniently injected using Symfony's expression language syntax:

XML is recommended for services defined within a bundle:

YAML is recommended for application-wide services:

Cascade Mode

If you have enabled cascade mode, get() will attempt to fetch undefined runtime parameters from the service container before throwing an exception.

Building upon the previous XML example, this would look like:

In this example, get('my.services.enabled') would return false even if the parameter was not defined in the runtime configuration. This is a safe way to introduce new parameters, which might not yet be available from your provider at the time of deployment.

Note: parameters sourced from the runtime configuration provider are not resolved for placeholder syntax (i.e. "%reference%"), unlike those defined in the service container.

Recipe: Interpreting Parameter Values as YAML

If you're using Doctrine ORM (or any database) to hold your parameters, you will likely implement a CRUD interface to define and edit parameters via an admin controller in your application.

Additionally, this allows us to add custom behavior to our ParameterProvider. For instance, we can use Symfony2's YAML component to interpret parameter values stored in the database as strings.

Consider the following Entity:

Several things are happening here:

• We must map an ID field, as the base Parameter class only defines essential name and value fields.
• The base class defines assertions for name and value fields (in groups, which can be easily disabled); however, the mapped superclass does not define a unique constraint on the name, so that is necessary.
• A callback assertion is used to check that the value property is valid YAML.

The above Entity class is complemented by the following EntityRepository, which serves as the ParameterProvider for the RuntimeParameterBag:

The base ParameterRepository already fetches name/value pairs from the database via a DQL query. Using array_map(), we can easily interpret those values through the same YAML component method.

Note: although we validate the Entity, it's possible that a value might have been manually altered in the database and contain invalid YAML when parameters are fetched for provision. If this is a concern, you may want to gracefully handle thrown ParseExceptions within getParametersAsKeyValueHash().

Recipe: Interpreting Parameter Values as YAML

It is also possible to store the parameter values as JSON. In order to do this, we need to re-define the value parameter as type "json" instead of "string".

Consider the following Entity:

In this case, we would not need to override the default repository query, getParametersAsKeyValueHash(), as the database results have already been json_decoded by Doctrine.