Could you explain the difference between Dependency Injection and the Service Locator pattern?

Dependency Injection (DI) and the service locator pattern are both used for managing dependencies in an application, but they differ in approach:

• Dependency Injection — dependencies are passed to an object from outside (for example, through a constructor or setter). This makes dependencies explicit and simplifies testing, as implementations can be easily replaced.

• Service Locator — the object itself requests its dependencies from a centralized service (locator). This hides dependencies, which can complicate understanding and testing.

Example of DI in Flutter:

class ApiService {}

class UserRepository {
  final ApiService apiService;

  UserRepository(this.apiService);
}

Here, UserRepository receives ApiService from outside.

In the case of a service locator, the object would itself access the global locator to obtain ApiService.