This post describes how to properly use Dependency Injection in the ASP.NET Web API, including proper Lifetime Management.

The ASP.NET Web API supports Dependency Injection (DI), but the appropriate way to make it work is not the way it's documented by Microsoft. Even though the final version of IDependencyResolver includes the notion of an IDependencyScope, and thus seemingly supports decommissioning (the release of IDisposable dependencies), it's not very useful.

The problem with IDependencyResolver #

The main problem with IDependencyResolver is that it's essentially a Service Locator. There are many problems with the Service Locator anti-pattern, but most of them I've already described elsewhere on this blog (and in my book). One disadvantage of Service Locator that I haven't yet written so much about is that within each call to GetService there's no context at all. This is a general problem with the Service Locator anti-pattern, not just with IDependencyResolver. Glenn Block originally pointed this out to me. The problem is that in an implementation, all you're given is a Type instance and asked to return an object, but you're not informed about the context. You don't know how deep in a dependency graph you are, and if you're being asked to provide an instance of the same service multiple times, you don't know whether it's within the same HTTP request, or whether it's for multiple concurrent HTTP requests.

In the ASP.NET Web API this issue is exacerbated by another design decision that the team made. Contrary to the IDependencyResolver design, I find this other decision highly appropriate. It's how context is modeled. In previous incarnations of web frameworks from Microsoft, we've had such abominations as HttpContext.Current, HttpContextBase and HttpContextWrapper. If you've ever tried to work with these interfaces, and particularly if you've tried to do TDD against any of these types, you know just how painful they are. That they are built around the Singleton pattern certainly doesn't help.

The ASP.NET Web API does it differently, and that's very fortunate. Everything you need to know about the context is accessible through the HttpRequestMessage class. While you could argue that it's a bit of a God Object, it's certainly a step in the right direction because at least it's a class you can instantiate within a unit test. No more nasty Singletons.

This is good, but from the perspective of DI this makes IDependencyResolver close to useless. Imagine a situation where a dependency deep in the dependency graph need to know something about the context. What was the request URL? What was the base address (host name etc.) requested? How can you share dependency instances within a single request? To answer such questions, you must know about the context, and IDependencyResolver doesn't provide this information. In short, IDependencyResolver isn't the right hook to compose dependency graphs. Fortunately, the ASP.NET Web API has a better extensibility point for this purpose.

Composition within context #

Because HttpRequestMessage provides the context you may need to compose dependency graphs, the best extensibility point is the extensibility point which provides an HttpRequestMessage every time a graph should be composed. This extensibility point is the IHttpControllerActivator interface:

public interface IHttpControllerActivator
{
    IHttpController Create(
        HttpRequestMessage request,
        HttpControllerDescriptor controllerDescriptor,
        Type controllerType);
}

As you can see, each time the Web API framework invokes this method, it will provide an HttpRequestMessage instance. This seems to be the best place to compose the dependency graph for each request.

Example: Poor Man's DI #

As an example, consider a Controller with this constructor signature:

public RootController(IStatusQuery statusQuery)

If this is the only Controller in your project, you can compose its dependency graph with a custom IHttpControllerActivator. This is easy to do:

public class PoorMansCompositionRoot : IHttpControllerActivator
{
    public IHttpController Create(
        HttpRequestMessage request,
        HttpControllerDescriptor controllerDescriptor,
        Type controllerType)
    {
        if (controllerType == typeof(RootController))
            return new RootController(
                new StatusQuery());
 
        return null;
    }
}

The Create implementation contains a check on the supplied controllerType parameter, creating a RootController instance if the requested Controller type is RootController. It simply creates the (very shallow) dependency graph by injecting a new StatusQuery instance into a new RootController instance. If the requested Controller type is anything else than RootController, the method returns null. It seems to be a convention in the Web API that if you can't supply an instance, you should return null. (This isn't a design I'm fond of, but this time I'm only on the supplying side, and I can only pity the developers on the receiving side (the ASP.NET team) that they'll have to write all those null checks.)

Some readers may think that it would be better to use a DI Container here, and that's certainly possible. In a future post I'll provide an example on how to do that.

The new PoorMansCompositionRoot class must be registered with the Web API framework before it will work. This is done with a single line in Application_Start in Global.asax.cs:

GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Services.Replace(
    typeof(IHttpControllerActivator),
    new PoorMansCompositionRoot());

This replaces the default implementation that the framework provides with the PoorMansCompositionRoot instance.

Decommissioning #

Implementing IHttpControllerActivator.Create takes care of composing object graphs, but what about decommissioning? What if you have dependencies (deep within the dependency graph) implementing the IDisposable interface? These must be disposed of after the request has ended (unless they are Singletons) - if not, you will have a resource leak at hand. However, there seems to be no Release hook in IHttpControllerActivator. On the other hand, there's a Release hook in IDependencyResolver, so is IDependencyResolver, after all, the right extensibility point? Must you trade off context for decommissioning, or can you have both?

Fortunately you can have both, because there's a RegisterForDispose extension method hanging off HttpRequestMessage. It enables you to register all appropriate disposable instances for disposal after the request has completed.

Example: disposing of a disposable dependency #

Imagine that, instead of the StatusQuery class from the previous example, you need to use a disposable implementation of IStatusQuery. Each instance must be disposed of after each request completes. In order to accomplish this goal, you can modify the PoorMansCompositionRoot implementation to this:

public class PoorMansCompositionRoot : IHttpControllerActivator
{
    public IHttpController Create(
        HttpRequestMessage request,
        HttpControllerDescriptor controllerDescriptor,
        Type controllerType)
    {
        if (controllerType == typeof(RootController))
        {
            var disposableQuery = new DisposableStatusQuery();
            request.RegisterForDispose(disposableQuery);
            return new RootController(disposableQuery);
        }
 
        return null;
    }
}

Notice that the disposableQuery instance is passed to the RegisterForDispose method before it's injected into the RootController instance and the entire graph is returned from the method. After the request completes, DisposableStatusQuery.Dispose will be called.

If you have a dependency which implements IDisposable, but should be shared across all requests, obviously you shouldn't register it for disposal. Such Singletons you can keep around and dispose of properly when the application exits gracefull (if that ever happens).

Summary #

Proper DI and Lifetime Management with the ASP.NET Web API is easy once you know how to do it. It only requires a few lines of code.

Stay away from the IDependencyResolver interface, which is close to useless. Instead, implement IHttpControllerActivator and use the RegisterForDispose method for decommissioning.

In a future post I will demonstrate how to use a DI Container instead of Poor Man's DI.


Comments

IDependencyResolver (WebApi version) do support scoping. Look at the "public IDependencyScope BeginScope()" method.
2012-09-28 12:24 UTC
Yes, that's what I wrote. The problem is that it doesn't provide any context.
2012-09-28 12:30 UTC
So what you're saying is that the DependencyResolver is bad because you *might* need to get more context information for the controller composition? Because I fail to see the advantage of your approach with the examples that you have given.
2012-09-28 18:17 UTC
Dave Bettin #
What changes would have you made to the DependencyResolver/Scope design to provide this context? Or would you ditch the design completely and start fresh?
2012-09-28 20:40 UTC
Dave, the IHttpControllerActivator/RegisterForDispose is a workable combo, but I'd preferred a release method on it, just like MVC's IControllerFactory.
2012-09-28 21:26 UTC
Jonas, let's assume that you have a deeper dependency graph. Let's say that you have this Controller constructor: public MyController(IService1, IService2). Imagine, moreover, that you have implementations of each of these interfaces, with these constructors: public Service1(IFoo) and public Service2(IFoo).

You have one implementation of IFoo, namely Foo, and for efficiency reasons, or perhaps because Foo is a Mediator, you'd like to share the same instance of Foo between Service1 and Service2. However, Foo isn't thread-safe, so you can only share the Foo instance within a single request. For each request, you want to use a single instance of Foo.

This is the Per Graph lifestyle pattern (p. 259 in my book).

That's not possible with IDependencyResolver, but it is with IHttpControllerActivator.
2012-09-28 21:35 UTC
Hi Mark

First of all I would like to mention that I just read your book and I enjoyed it very much.
Straight to the point with good simple examples and metaphors.
What I have noticed thought, from your book and from this blog post, is that you give handing IDisposable object a great deal of attention.

I have written a lightweight service container over at Github (https://github.com/seesharper/LightInject/wiki/Getting-started) that tries to do the "right thing" with a minimal effort.

Then I started to read about handling disposable services in your book and realized that this is actually quite a complicated thing to deal with.

It also seems to be unclear how a service container actually should do this. The various container implementations has pretty much its own take on the disposable challenge where as Spring.Net for instance, does not seem to go very far on this topic. Yet it is one of the most popular DI frameworks out there.

The question then remains, is automatic handling of disposable objects a necessity for any container or is a feature?

If it is absolutely necessary, how complex does it need to be. I would rather not implement a whole ref-count system on top of the CLR :)

Regards

Bernhard Richter


2012-09-29 08:39 UTC
Well, whether or not it's a necessity depends on who you ask.

StructureMap, for example, has no decommissioning capability, and when you ask Jeremy Miller, it's by design. The reason for this is that if you don't have any disposable dependencies at all, it's just an overhead keeping track of all the instances created by the container. Garbage collection will ensure that resources are properly reclaimed.

Containers that do keep track of the instances they created will leak unless you explicitly remember to Release what you Resolve. By that argument, Jeremy Miller considers StructureMap's design safer because in the majority case there will be no leaks. IMO, the downside of that is that if you have disposable dependencies, they will leak and there's nothing you can do about.

On the other hand, with a container like Castle Windsor, it's important to Release what you Resolve, or you might have leaks. The advantage, however, is that you're guaranteed that everything can be properly disposed of.

Thus, in the end, no matter the strategy, it all boils down to that the developers using the container must exercise discipline. However, they are two different kinds of discipline: Either never use disposable dependencies or always Release what you Resolve.
2012-09-30 12:09 UTC
Kirin Yao #
So, it's also applicable to DI in ASP.NET MVC, isn't it? In IControllerActivator.Create method, RequestContext parameter provides the context for creating controller.
2012-10-19 09:02 UTC
Yes, this is described in detail in section 7.2 in my book.
2012-10-19 12:39 UTC
Ali #
Hi Mark,

Great article, thanks a lot! Loved your book as well :)

I just have a little observation that returning null in the Create method causes a 404. Instead we could do the following to call the default implementation for other controllers:

return new DefaultHttpControllerActivator().Create(request, controllerDescriptor, controllerType);
2013-02-22 10:16 UTC
ImaginaryDevelopment #
Hi Mark,

How would you handle db calls that need to be made to validate objects in say [CustomValidationAttribute()] tags
where you need the objects used to validate again in the actual web api action method?

2014-08-28 14:52 UTC

In general, I don't like attributes with behaviour, but prefer passive attributes. Still, that just moves the implementation to the Filter's ExecuteActionFilterAsync method, so that doesn't really address your question.

If you need access to the actual objects created from the incoming request, you probably could pull it out of the HttpActionContext passed into ExecuteActionFilterAsync, but why bother? You can access the object from the Controller.

A Filter attribute in ASP.NET Web API, to be useful, represents a Cross-Cutting Concern, such as security, logging, metering, caching, etc. Cross-Cutting Concerns are cross-cutting exactly because they are independent of the actual values or objects in use. This isn't the case for validation, which tends to be specific to particular types, so these are most likely better addressed by a Controller, or a Service invoked by the Controller, rather than by a custom attribute.

Once you're in the Controller, if you need access to a database, you can inject a data access object (commonly referred to as a Repository) into the Controller.

2014-08-30 11:23 UTC


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Published

Friday, 28 September 2012 03:56:21 UTC

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Published: Friday, 28 September 2012 03:56:21 UTC