Litestar Autowire

litestar-autowire

litestar-autowire 0.2.0 discovers Litestar controllers and event listeners from domain packages. It can also load optional integration modules without turning application setup into a central list of every domain component.

Use Autowire when the project already groups features into stable Python packages. Keep manual Router and plugin composition when the app is small, route registration is intentionally explicit, or packages do not follow a consistent convention.

Code Style Rules

• Configure dotted package roots with domain_packages.
• Import public APIs from litestar_autowire.
• Keep controllers and listeners in their owning domain package.
• Keep route handlers and listeners async when they perform I/O.
• Configure third-party loaders via integrations (DishkaIntegration(), QueuesIntegration()).
• Configure Dishka and Litestar Queues separately; Autowire only discovers or wraps their domain-owned components.
• Call clear_autowire_cache() when tests create, replace, or remove modules.

Quick Reference

Install

pip install litestar-autowire==0.2.0

Install only the integrations already used by the project:

pip install "litestar-autowire[dishka]==0.2.0"
pip install "litestar-autowire[queues]==0.2.0"

Domain layout

my_app/
└── domains/
    ├── accounts/
    │   ├── controllers.py
    │   ├── events.py
    │   └── jobs.py
    └── billing/
        └── routes.py

Regular packages and PEP 420 namespace packages are supported. Autowire checks the configured root and each direct child package. Read Discovery before changing module conventions or debugging a missing component.

App setup

from litestar import Litestar
from litestar_autowire import AutowireConfig, AutowirePlugin

autowire = AutowirePlugin(
    AutowireConfig(domain_packages=["my_app.domains"]),
)

app = Litestar(plugins=[autowire])

The default component modules are:

Customize module names without changing the domain layout:

config = AutowireConfig(
    domain_packages=["my_app.domains"],
    controller_modules=["http"],
    listener_modules=["subscribers"],
    discover_listeners=False,
)

Router selection

By default, discovered controller classes are appended directly to AppConfig.route_handlers. Set router_class=Router when the project needs a wrapper for router-level before_request or after_response hooks:

from litestar import Router
from litestar_autowire import AutowireConfig

config = AutowireConfig(
    domain_packages=["my_app.domains"],
    router_class=Router,
    before_request=set_request_context,
    after_response=record_response,
)

The wrapper is constructed with path="/", the discovered controller classes, and the configured hooks. Use integrations=["dishka"] instead when the project already uses Dishka and needs DishkaRouter. See Integrations.

Workflow

1. Inspect the project layout and confirm domains are importable package roots.
2. Choose Autowire only when domain packages follow consistent controller or listener module conventions.
3. Register one AutowirePlugin(AutowireConfig(...)) in the app plugin list.
4. Keep the default module names or configure explicit module-name tuples.
5. Enable only integrations already present in the project stack.
6. Configure Dishka or Litestar Queues through their own application plugins.
7. Test discovery, error propagation, and cache isolation with the patterns in Testing.

Guardrails

• Do not describe Autowire as recursive domain discovery. It discovers the configured root and direct feature children; component modules may themselves contain importable leaf modules.
• Do not claim arbitrary route-handler discovery. Autowire registers Controller subclasses and EventListener objects.
• Do not imply queue tasks are enabled by default. The queues integration must be selected and its optional dependency installed.
• Do not suppress dependency import failures. Only an absent configured package or absent target component module is skipped.
• Do not use both a custom router_class and expect Dishka to replace it. DishkaIntegration preserves an already selected router class.
• Do not give custom integrations the names dishka or queues. Built-in name collisions fail during configuration.
• Do not reuse stale discovery state in tests or reload tooling. Clear the process-local caches before rediscovery.

Validation Checkpoint

• domain_packages contains importable dotted package roots.
• The configured roots and component module names match the source layout.
• Controller classes are defined in the discovered module, not merely re-exported into it.
• Queue task discovery is enabled only with the Queues extra and integration.
• Dishka and Litestar Queues retain their own application configuration.
• Custom integrations satisfy AutowireIntegration and use unique names.
• Router hooks are paired with a compatible router_class.
• Tests call clear_autowire_cache() around dynamic module changes.
• Missing dependency imports still fail instead of silently dropping a domain.

Example

from litestar import Controller, get


class AccountController(Controller):
    path = "/accounts"

    @get()
    async def list_accounts(self) -> list[dict[str, str]]:
        return [{"name": "primary"}]

from litestar import Litestar
from litestar_autowire import AutowireConfig, AutowirePlugin

app = Litestar(
    plugins=[
        AutowirePlugin(
            AutowireConfig(
                domain_packages=["my_app.domains"],
                discover_controllers=True,
                discover_listeners=True,
            )
        )
    ],
)

Autowire imports my_app.domains.accounts.controllers, registers AccountController, and checks the configured listener module names. It does not load jobs.py until the queues integration is selected.

References Index

• Discovery — package traversal, PEP 420 behavior, component selection, caches, and import failures
• Integrations — custom integrations, AutowireLoader, router selection, Dishka, and Litestar Queues
• Testing — deterministic cache isolation and package-discovery tests
• Litestar Routing — controller and manual router composition
• Litestar Plugins — application plugin wiring
• Litestar DI — built-in DI and Dishka selection
• Litestar Queues — queue configuration, tasks, and workers
• Litestar Testing — Litestar test clients and dependency overrides

Official References

• https://github.com/cofin/litestar-autowire/releases/tag/v0.2.0
• https://github.com/cofin/litestar-autowire/tree/v0.2.0/litestar_autowire
• https://github.com/cofin/litestar-autowire/blob/v0.2.0/tests/unit/test_autowire_plugin.py

Shared Styleguide Baseline

• General
• Python
• Litestar
• Testing