Dependency Injection in ASP.NET Web API with Castle Windsor by Mark Seemann

This post describes how to compose Controllers with Castle Windsor in the ASP.NET Web API

In my previous post I described how to use Dependency Injection (DI) in the ASP.NET Web API using Poor Man's DI. It explained the basic building blocks, including the relevant extensibility points in the Web API. Poor Man's DI can be an easy way to get started with DI and may be sufficient for a small code base, but for larger code bases you may want to adopt a more convention-based approach. Some DI Containers provide excellent support for Convention over Configuration. One of these is Castle Windsor.

Composition Root #

Instead of the PoorMansCompositionRoot from the example in the previous post, you can create an implementation of IHttpControllerActivator that acts as an Adapter over Castle Windsor:

public class WindsorCompositionRoot : IHttpControllerActivator
{
    private readonly IWindsorContainer container;
 
    public WindsorCompositionRoot(IWindsorContainer container)
    {
        this.container = container;
    }
 
    public IHttpController Create(
        HttpRequestMessage request,
        HttpControllerDescriptor controllerDescriptor,
        Type controllerType)
    {
        var controller =
            (IHttpController)this.container.Resolve(controllerType);
 
        request.RegisterForDispose(
            new Release(
                () => this.container.Release(controller)));
 
        return controller;
    }
 
    private class Release : IDisposable
    {
        private readonly Action release;
 
        public Release(Action release)
        {
            this.release = release;
        }
 
        public void Dispose()
        {
            this.release();
        }
    }
}

That's pretty much all there is to it, but there are a few points of interest here. First of all, the class implements IHttpControllerActivator just like the previous PoorMansCompositionRoot. That's the extensibility point you need to implement in order to create Controller instances. However, instead of hard-coding knowledge of concrete Controller classes into the Create method, you delegate creation of the instance to an injected IWindsorContainer instance. However, before returning the IHttpController instance created by calling container.Resolve, you register that object graph for disposal.

With Castle Windsor decommissioning is done by invoking the Release method on IWindsorContainer. The input into the Release method is the object graph originally created by IWindsorContainer.Resolve. That's the rule from the Register Resolve Release pattern: What you Resolve you must also Release. This ensures that if the Resolve method created a disposable instance (even deep in the object graph), the Release method signals to the container that it can now safely dispose of it. You can read more about this subject in my book.

The RegisterForDispose method takes as a parameter an IDisposable instance, and not a Release method, so you must wrap the call to the Release method in an IDisposable implementation. That's the little private Release class in the code example. It adapts an Action delegate into a class which implements IDisposable, invoking the code block when Dispose is invoked. The code block you pass into the constructor of the Release class is a closure around the outer variables this.container and controller so when the Dispose method is called, the container releases the controller (and the entire object graph beneath it).

Configuring the container #

With the WindsorCompositionRoot class in place, all that's left is to set it all up in Global.asax. Since IWindsorContainer itself implements IDisposable, you should create and configure the container in the application's constructor so that you can dispose it when the application exits:

private readonly IWindsorContainer container;
 
public WebApiApplication()
{
    this.container =
        new WindsorContainer().Install(new DependencyConventions());
}
 
public override void Dispose()
{
    this.container.Dispose();
    base.Dispose();
}

Notice that you can configure the container with the Install method directly in the constructor. That's the Register phase of the Register Resolve Release pattern.

In Application_Start you tell the ASP.NET Web API about your WindsorCompositionRoot instead of PoorMansCompositionRoot from the previous example:

GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Services.Replace(
    typeof(IHttpControllerActivator),
    new WindsorCompositionRoot(this.container));

Notice that the container instance field is passed into the constructor of WindsorCompositionRoot, so that it can use the container instance to Resolve Controller instances.

Summary #

Setting up DI in the ASP.NET Web API with a DI Container is easy, and it would work very similarly with other containers (not just Castle Windsor), although the Release mechanisms tend to be a bit different from container to container. You'll need to create an Adapter from IHttpControllerActivator to your container of choice and set it all up in the Global.asax.

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