Pass Braintree gateway across Laravel controllers

Question

I am setting up a payment method for a website, and I want to pass a default Braintree gateway through my entire Laravel 5 app. I have the following in my AppServiceProvider.php, but not sure if thats where it should go or not.

public function boot() {
    Schema::defaultStringLength(191);

    $gateway = new Braintree_Gateway([
        'environment' => env('BRAINTREE_ENVIRONMENT'),
        'merchantId' => env('BRAINTREE_MERCHANT_ID'),
        'publicKey' => env('BRAINTREE_PUBLIC_KEY'),
        'privateKey' => env('BRAINTREE_PRIVATE_KEY')
    ]);
}

Should it go in that file? Or should I just set that in the BaseViewController?

Answer 1

This is the perfect use case for the Laravel service container.

In a service provider (you can make a new one or use the default AppServiceProvider), you would bind a generic PaymentGateway to a specific instance of your Braintree payment gateway :

$this->app->bind('PaymentGateway', function ($app) {
    return new Braintree_Gateway([...]);
});

Then, anywhere in your app where you need to use that gateway (for example, in the store() method of one of your controllers), you could do this :

public function store(PaymentGateway $gateway)
{
    // Do whatever you need with the gateway
    $gateway->doSomething();
}

This is a great approach because you don't need to create a new instance everytime and manually add the credentials. You can just typehint it wherever you need it and Laravel will automatically resolve it for you.