Dependency injection in constructor of controller with using a ControllerFactory in ASP.NET MVC 5

Question

I'm developing ASP.NET MVC 5 app. I need to use parameters in controller's constructor. DefaultControllerFactory can't resolve it and i inherited from it my own ControllerFactory:

public class ControllerFactoryProvider : DefaultControllerFactory
{
    public IController CreateController(System.Web.Routing.RequestContext requestContext, string controllerName)
    {
        string controllerType = string.Empty;
        IController controller = null;

        // Read Controller Class & Assembly Name from Web.Config
        controllerType = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[controllerName];

        if (controllerType == null)
            throw new ConfigurationErrorsException("Assembly not configured for controller " + controllerName);
        // Create Controller Instance
        IDataTransmitter _dataTransmitter = new DataTransmitter();
        controller = Activator.CreateInstance(Type.GetType(controllerType), _dataTransmitter) as IController;
        return controller;
    }

    public void ReleaseController(IController controller)
    {
    //This is a sample implementation
    //If pooling is used to write code to return the object to pool
        if (controller is IDisposable)
        {
            (controller as IDisposable).Dispose();
        }
        controller = null;
    }

} I registered it in Global.asax:

ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(new ControllerFactoryProvider());

But when i run my app it whatever use DefaultControllerFactory didn't see constructor with parameters.

Where can i have an error?

Answer 1

As I said in the comments, there is no need to override your controller factory. You just need to plug in your preferred dependency injection container.

I haven't had the opportunity to work with every dependency injection containers for .net but I'll try to give an objective answer.

Ninject

To set up Ninject in an asp.net Mvc 5 project is very straight forward.

Installing the nuget package

There's a very handy nuget package called Ninject.MVC5.

You can install it:

• Using the manage nuget packages dialogue, or
• By running Install-Package Ninject.MVC5 in the package manager console.

After installing Ninject.MVC5 you will see a new file in your solution in App_Start/ called NinjectWebCommon.cs. Here you can see what the contents of that file will end up being.

Wiring up your dependencies

Now that the package is installed you want to register your denpencies using ninject's api.

Let's say you have an IFoo interface and its implementation Foo

public interface IFoo
{
    int Bar()
}

public class Foo : IFoo
{
    public int Bar()
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }
}

In your NinjectWebCommon class you're going to tell ninject how to resolve an IFoo interface:

/// <summary>
/// Load your modules or register your services here!
/// </summary>
/// <param name="kernel">The kernel.</param>
private static void RegisterServices(IKernel kernel)
{
    kernel.Bind<IFoo>().To<Foo>();
}

Keep in mind that by default Ninject has implicit self binding of concrete types, that means that

If the type you’re resolving is a concrete type (like Foo above), Ninject will automatically create a default association via a mechanism called implicit self binding. It’s as if there’s a registration like this:

Bind<Foo>().To<Foo>();