Many people have trouble getting the hang of dependency injection, at first. And I think part of the problem is that it is actually so simple that we're inclined to look for something more complicated. "Surely that there has to be more to it?!", so to say. So, with that in mind, imagine that you're writing an app that gives weather reports. You need a cloud-service (excuse the pun ;) )

to provide the data, and at first you go for a free weather report provider, but in future you'd like to integrate a weather service with better accuracy and more features. So, as do all good object-oriented developers, you make a WeatherClient protocol and back it initially with an implementation based on the free, online data provider.

Without dependency injection, you might have a View Controller like this:

-(id) init 
{
 self = [super init];
 if (self) 
 {
 //The class using some collaborating class builds its own assistant.
 //it might be one of several classes using the weatherClient. 
  _weatherClient = [GoogleWeatherClientImpl alloc] initWithParameters:xyz];
 }
 return self;
}

The thing with this approach is, if you wanted to change to another weather client implementation you'd have to go and find all the places in your code that use the old one, and move them over to the new one. Each time, making sure to pass in the correct initialization parameters. A very common approach is to have a centrally configured singleton:

_weatherClient = [GoogleWeatherClient sharedInstance];

With either of the above approaches, in order to test your view controller, you now have to test its collaborating class (the weather client) at the same time, and this can get tricky, especially as your application gets more complex. Imagine testing Class A, depends on Class B, depends on Class C, depends on .... Not much fun! Sure, you could patch out the singleton with a mock or a stub, but this requires peeking inside the code to find the dependencies. Besides taking time that could be better spent else-where, this ends up becoming "glass-box" testing as opposed to "black-box"

testing. Isn't it better to be able to test the external interface to a class, without having worry about what's going on inside? And you have to remember un-patch again at the end of the test-case or risk strange breakages to other tests, where its difficult to pin-point what the real problem is might be. So with dependency injection, rather than having objects make their own collaborators, we have them supplied to the class instance via an initializer or property setter.

And now, it simply becomes:

-(id) initWithWeatherClient:(id<WeatherClient>)weatherClient
{
 self = [super init];
 if (self) 
 {
     _weatherClient = weatherClient;
 }
 return self;
}

Yes it is. Right now, you might be thinking "Geez! That's a pretty fancy name for something so plain." Well, you'd be right. But let's look at the implications on our application architecture: If you do this with significant collaborators throughout your app, it means that the GoogleWeatherClientImpl is now declared in a single place - the top-level assembly, so-to-speak. And all of the classes that need to use some kind of id<WeatherClient> will have it passed in. This means that:

• If you want to change from one implementation to another, you need only change a single declaration.
• Classes are easier to test, because we can supply simple mocks and stubs in place of concrete collaborators. Or the real collaborators, but configured to be used in a test scenario. (One of my design goals).
• It promotes separation of concerns and a clear contract between classes. Its easy to see what each class needs in order to do its job.
• Your app is easier to maintain and can accommodate new requirements.

If you proceed with the Dependency Injection pattern (assuming you're not one of the remaining "flat-earthers", who believe that Objective-C somehow magically alleviates the need for common-sense: "Oh, I don't do DI, I use swizzling class-clusters!"), then there are basically two options:

You can do dependency injection without a framework to help you. It is simple after all, and in fact I recommend you do this, at least as an exercise in software design. And yes, it is certainly possble that this will be adequate. But, I think its good to have help, if you can get it. You can also write tests without a test framework, mocks with out a mock library, software without a compiler.

So, going down the framework route, there's been quite a lot of action in Objective-C land, over the last three years. In fact, there are now around 15 Dependency Injection frameworks, many following in the footsteps of Google Guice. The authors have done a great job (Objection is especially good). However, I wanted an approach that allows the following:

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