When you need to share logic between components, Angular leverages the design pattern of dependency injection that allows you to create a “service” which allows you to inject code into components while managing it from a single source of truth.
What are services?
Services are reusable pieces of code that can be injected.
Similar to defining a component, services are comprised of the following:
- A TypeScript decorator that declares the class as an Angular service via
@Injectable
and allows you to define what part of the application can access the service via theprovidedIn
property (which is typically'root'
) to allow a service to be accessed anywhere within the application. - A TypeScript class that defines the desired code that will be accessible when the service is injected
Here is an example of a Calculator
service.
import {Injectable} from '@angular/core';@Injectable({providedIn: 'root'})export class Calculator { add(x: number, y: number) { return x + y; }}
How to use a service
When you want to use a service in a component, you need to:
- Import the service
- Declare a class field where the service is injected. Assign the class field to the result of the call of the built-in function
inject
which creates the service
Here’s what it might look like in the Receipt
component:
import { Component, inject } from '@angular/core';import { Calculator } from './calculator';@Component({ selector: 'app-receipt', template: `<h1>The total is {{ totalCost }}</h1>`,})export class Receipt { private calculator = inject(Calculator); totalCost = this.calculator.add(50, 25);}
In this example, the Calculator
is being used by calling the Angular function inject
and passing in the service to it.