Customizing the Application Modules: Overriding Services

You may need to change behavior (business logic) of a depended module for your application. In this case, you can use the power of the dependency injection system to replace a service, controller or even a page model of the depended module by your own implementation.

Replacing a service is possible for any type of class registered to the dependency injection, including services of the ABP Framework.

You have different options can be used based on your requirement those will be explained in the next sections.

Notice that some service methods may not be virtual, so you may not be able to override. We make all virtual by design. If you find any method that is not overridable, please create an issue or do it yourself and send a pull request on GitHub.

Replacing an Interface

If given service defines an interface, like the IdentityUserAppService class implements the IIdentityAppService, you can re-implement the same interface and replace the current implementation by your class. Example:

public class MyIdentityUserAppService : IIdentityUserAppService, ITransientDependency
{
    //...
}

MyIdentityUserAppService replaces the IIdentityUserAppService by naming convention (since both ends with IdentityUserAppService). If your class name doesn't match, you need to manually expose the service interface:

[ExposeServices(typeof(IIdentityUserAppService))]
public class TestAppService : IIdentityUserAppService, ITransientDependency
{
    //...
}

The dependency injection system allows to register multiple services for the same interface. The last registered one is used when the interface is injected. It is a good practice to explicitly replace the service.

Example:

[Dependency(ReplaceServices = true)]
[ExposeServices(typeof(IIdentityUserAppService))]
public class TestAppService : IIdentityUserAppService, ITransientDependency
{
    //...
}

In this way, there will be a single implementation of the IIdentityUserAppService interface, while it doesn't change the result for this case. Replacing a service is also possible by code:

context.Services.Replace(
    ServiceDescriptor.Transient<IIdentityUserAppService, MyIdentityUserAppService>()
);

You can write this inside the ConfigureServices method of your module.

Overriding a Service Class

In most cases, you will want to change one or a few methods of the current implementation for a service. Re-implementing the complete interface would not be efficient in this case. As a better approach, inherit from the original class and override the desired method.

Example: Overriding an Application Service

[Dependency(ReplaceServices = true)]
public class MyIdentityUserAppService : IdentityUserAppService
{
    //...
    public MyIdentityUserAppService(
        IdentityUserManager userManager,
        IIdentityUserRepository userRepository,
        IGuidGenerator guidGenerator
    ) : base(
        userManager,
        userRepository,
        guidGenerator)
    {
    }

    public override async Task<IdentityUserDto> CreateAsync(IdentityUserCreateDto input)
    {
        if (input.PhoneNumber.IsNullOrWhiteSpace())
        {
            throw new AbpValidationException(
                "Phone number is required for new users!",
                new List<ValidationResult>
                {
                    new ValidationResult(
                        "Phone number can not be empty!",
                        new []{"PhoneNumber"}
                    )
                }
            );        }

        return await base.CreateAsync(input);
    }
}

This class overrides the CreateAsync method of the IdentityUserAppService application service to check the phone number. Then calls the base method to continue to the underlying business logic. In this way, you can perform additional business logic before and after the base logic.

You could completely re-write the entire business logic for a user creation without calling the base method.

Example: Overriding a Domain Service

[Dependency(ReplaceServices = true)]
[ExposeServices(typeof(IdentityUserManager))]
public class MyIdentityUserManager : IdentityUserManager
{
    public MyIdentityUserManager(
        IdentityUserStore store, 
        IOptions<IdentityOptions> optionsAccessor, 
        IPasswordHasher<IdentityUser> passwordHasher,
        IEnumerable<IUserValidator<IdentityUser>> userValidators, 
        IEnumerable<IPasswordValidator<IdentityUser>> passwordValidators, 
        ILookupNormalizer keyNormalizer, 
        IdentityErrorDescriber errors, 
        IServiceProvider services, 
        ILogger<IdentityUserManager> logger, 
        ICancellationTokenProvider cancellationTokenProvider
        ) : base(
            store, 
            optionsAccessor, 
            passwordHasher, 
            userValidators, 
            passwordValidators, 
            keyNormalizer, 
            errors, 
            services, 
            logger, 
            cancellationTokenProvider)
    {
    }

    public override async Task<IdentityResult> CreateAsync(IdentityUser user)
    {
        if (user.PhoneNumber.IsNullOrWhiteSpace())
        {
            throw new AbpValidationException(
                "Phone number is required for new users!",
                new List<ValidationResult>
                {
                    new ValidationResult(
                        "Phone number can not be empty!",
                        new []{"PhoneNumber"}
                    )
                }
            );
        }

        return await base.CreateAsync(user);
    }
}

This example class inherits from the IdentityUserManager domain service and overrides the CreateAsync method to perform the same phone number check implemented above. The result is same, but this time we've implemented it inside the domain service assuming that this is a core domain logic for our system.

[ExposeServices(typeof(IdentityUserManager))] attribute is required here since IdentityUserManager does not define an interface (like IIdentityUserManager) and dependency injection system doesn't expose services for inherited classes (like it does for the implemented interfaces) by convention.

Check the localization system to learn how to localize the error messages.

Overriding Other Classes

Overriding controllers, framework services, view component classes and any other type of classes registered to dependency injection can be overridden just like the examples above.

How to Find the Services?

Module documents includes the list of the major services they define. In addition, you can investigate their source code to explore all the services.