Avoid injecting http request via construct really?

[ol1s]

Reading through the Laravel Octane docs (https://laravel.com/docs/11.x/octane#request-injection) it seems to suggest that from a best practices perspective:

In general, you should avoid injecting the ... HTTP request instance into the constructors of other objects

So I guess this means that the following is NOT recommended:

class MyClass
{
    public function __construct(private Illuminate\Http\Request $request)
    {
    }
}

My question though - is this really the case?

The docs then go on to mention an exception:

It is acceptable to type-hint the Illuminate\Http\Request instance on your controller methods

So should we really avoid injecting the Illuminate\Http\Request instance into any class other than a controller??

The Laravel Octane docs give an example using a singleton which makes much more sense to me - as in, you don't want a request bound to a singleton with Octane because subsequent requests will receive the original (stale) instance.

But, in general, if if I'm not using a singleton is there really anything so bad about injecting the Illuminate\Http\Request instance to my custom classes?

[kewne]

It's not that it's bad per se, it's that the alternatives are usually better, from a modelling perspective.

The docs say not only that it is acceptable to type-hint Request in controllers, but also specifically says controller methods.

The likely reason is that controllers, like Request, are HTTP specific. They exist to translate HTTP requests into service calls, so when your form or API changes, you don't have to rewrite your domain logic.

As for why methods and not constructors, it has to do with class lifecycle.
If you inject Request into the constructor, you then have to create a new controller instance for each request, whereas injecting into the method allows you to reuse the instance.

[marius-mcp]

Thank you for this observation:

"If you inject Request into the constructor, you then have to create a new controller instance for each request, whereas injecting into the method allows you to reuse the instance."