Confused about Service vs Factory

For me the revelation came when I realise that they all work the same way: by running something once, storing the value they get, and then cough up that same stored value when referenced through Dependency Injection.

Say we have:

app.factory('a', fn);
app.service('b', fn);
app.provider('c', fn);

The difference between the three is that:

1. a's stored value comes from running fn , in other words: fn()
2. b’s stored value comes from newing fn, in other words: new fn()
3. c’s stored value comes from first getting an instance by newing fn, and then running a $get method of the instance

which means, there’s something like a cache object inside angular, whose value of each injection is only assigned once, when they've been injected the first time, and where:

cache.a = fn()
cache.b = new fn()
cache.c = (new fn()).$get()

This is why we use this in services, and define a this.$get in providers.

Hope this helps.

All angular services are singletons:

Docs (see Services as singletons): https://docs.angularjs.org/guide/services

Lastly, it is important to realize that all Angular services are application singletons. This means that there is only one instance of a given service per injector.

Basically the difference between the service and factory is as follows:

app.service('myService', function() {

  // service is just a constructor function
  // that will be called with 'new'

  this.sayHello = function(name) {
     return "Hi " + name + "!";
  };
});

app.factory('myFactory', function() {

  // factory returns an object
  // you can run some code before

  return {
    sayHello : function(name) {
      return "Hi " + name + "!";
    }
  }
});

Check out this presentation about $provide: http://slides.wesalvaro.com/20121113/#/

Those slides were used in one of the AngularJs meetups: http://blog.angularjs.org/2012/11/more-angularjs-meetup-videos.html

live example

" hello world " example

with factory / service / provider :

var myApp = angular.module('myApp', []);
 
//service style, probably the simplest one
myApp.service('helloWorldFromService', function() {
    this.sayHello = function() {
        return "Hello, World!"
    };
});
 
//factory style, more involved but more sophisticated
myApp.factory('helloWorldFromFactory', function() {
    return {
        sayHello: function() {
            return "Hello, World!"
        }
    };
});
    
//provider style, full blown, configurable version     
myApp.provider('helloWorld', function() {
    // In the provider function, you cannot inject any
    // service or factory. This can only be done at the
    // "$get" method.
 
    this.name = 'Default';
 
    this.$get = function() {
        var name = this.name;
        return {
            sayHello: function() {
                return "Hello, " + name + "!"
            }
        }
    };
 
    this.setName = function(name) {
        this.name = name;
    };
});
 
//hey, we can configure a provider!            
myApp.config(function(helloWorldProvider){
    helloWorldProvider.setName('World');
});
        
 
function MyCtrl($scope, helloWorld, helloWorldFromFactory, helloWorldFromService) {
    
    $scope.hellos = [
        helloWorld.sayHello(),
        helloWorldFromFactory.sayHello(),
        helloWorldFromService.sayHello()];
}​