Common services

Drupal’s behavior lives in services resolved from the container. In a class that supports autowiring, type-hint the fully qualified name in the table and Drupal injects the service. Autowiring works only when core defines an alias for that type; every type below has one except the cache bin, which needs an explicit service ID. The service ID is what you name in a *.services.yml arguments list or pass to \Drupal::service(). This is the shortlist you reach for daily. For the full container, see Services and dependency injection.

Example

Constructor injection with autowiring:

public function __construct(
  private readonly EntityTypeManagerInterface $entityTypeManager,
  private readonly AccountProxyInterface $currentUser,
) {}

Entities

Service ID	Type-hint
entity_type.manager	\Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityTypeManagerInterface
entity.repository	\Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityRepositoryInterface
entity_field.manager	\Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityFieldManagerInterface
entity_type.bundle.info	\Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityTypeBundleInfoInterface

Request, routing, and the current user

Service ID	Type-hint
current_route_match	\Drupal\Core\Routing\RouteMatchInterface
request_stack	\Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\RequestStack
current_user	\Drupal\Core\Session\AccountProxyInterface
path_alias.manager	\Drupal\path_alias\AliasManagerInterface
url_generator	\Drupal\Core\Routing\UrlGeneratorInterface

Storage

Service ID	Type-hint	Use for
database	\Drupal\Core\Database\Connection	Direct SQL when the entity API does not fit.
config.factory	\Drupal\Core\Config\ConfigFactoryInterface	Settings that ship as configuration.
state	\Drupal\Core\State\StateInterface	Small, environment-specific values that are not configuration.
keyvalue	\Drupal\Core\KeyValueStore\KeyValueFactoryInterface	Arbitrary keyed collections.
tempstore.private	\Drupal\Core\TempStore\PrivateTempStoreFactory	Per-user work in progress (wizards, carts).

Output and messaging

Service ID	Type-hint
renderer	\Drupal\Core\Render\RendererInterface
messenger	\Drupal\Core\Messenger\MessengerInterface
string_translation	\Drupal\Core\StringTranslation\TranslationInterface
date.formatter	\Drupal\Core\Datetime\DateFormatterInterface

Infrastructure

Service ID	Type-hint	Use for
datetime.time	\Drupal\Component\Datetime\TimeInterface	The request timestamp (testable, unlike time()).
logger.factory	\Drupal\Core\Logger\LoggerChannelFactoryInterface	Get a named logger channel.
cache.default	\Drupal\Core\Cache\CacheBackendInterface	A general-purpose cache bin. No alias exists, because every bin shares this interface: add Symfony’s #[Autowire(service: 'cache.default')] to the parameter, or list '@cache.default' in arguments. The same applies to every cache.* bin.
cache_tags.invalidator	\Drupal\Core\Cache\CacheTagsInvalidatorInterface	Invalidate cached output by tag.
http_client	\GuzzleHttp\ClientInterface	Outbound HTTP requests.
queue	\Drupal\Core\Queue\QueueFactory	Background work.
file_system	\Drupal\Core\File\FileSystemInterface	File operations through stream wrappers.
file_url_generator	\Drupal\Core\File\FileUrlGeneratorInterface	Public and private file URLs.
module_handler	\Drupal\Core\Extension\ModuleHandlerInterface	Check installed modules; invoke hooks.
event_dispatcher	\Symfony\Contracts\EventDispatcher\EventDispatcherInterface	Dispatch and subscribe to events.
language_manager	\Drupal\Core\Language\LanguageManagerInterface	Languages and the current language.

Related

• Services and dependency injection explains autowiring, factories, and tagged services.
• Services and events shows defining your own service.
• Browse every service on the services and the container topic on api.drupal.org.