Creating and Using Service Classes
As controllers accumulate more responsibilities, business logic can start to sprawl across many methods, making it harder to test or reuse. Service classes offer a clean solution: a dedicated place to hold logic that doesn't naturally belong in a model or a controller.
What a Service Class Is
A service class is simply a plain PHP class, usually stored in a folder like app/Services, that encapsulates a specific piece of business logic — such as processing a payment or generating a report. It has no special framework requirement; it's a structural convention, not a built-in Laravel feature.
Why Use Services
| Without a Service | With a Service |
|---|---|
| Business logic lives inside the controller | Business logic lives in a focused, reusable class |
| Hard to reuse logic across multiple controllers | Same logic can be injected wherever it's needed |
| Difficult to unit test in isolation | Easy to test independently of HTTP requests |
Using a Service in a Controller
- A service is typically injected directly into a controller's constructor
- Controllers stay thin, simply coordinating between requests and services
- Services can depend on other services or repositories as needed
Injecting a service manually works fine for simple cases, but Laravel has a more powerful system underneath for managing how classes are built and connected — its service container and service providers.
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