Autofac 2 is on the way, now in Beta!

Posted by Glenn Block on December 31, 2009

A while ago, I joined the ranks of those whose favorite new container became Autofac. Why do I like it? it’s FAST, easy to use, and very powerful due to it’s functional nature. You might say I am biased because the guy who wrote it was on my team, but anyway…

I am exited to hear that Nick has a new blog and is at it again and well on his way to the next version. Yes folks, Autofac 2 is coming!

If you head over to Google Code, you’ll see a lot of cool stuff coming in version 2. My favorite feature is below, ripped from the wiki.  If our new PartCreator<T> was reading this it would be seriously jealous!

Auto-Generated Factories

When one component needs to dynamically create instances of another, it can take a dependency on a delegate that returns the type of component it requires:

class UsesServer
{
  Func<IServerConnection> _connectionFactory;

  public UsesServer(Func<IServerConnection> connectionFactory)
  {
    _connectionFactory = connectionFactory;
  }

  public void OnNewWork()
  {
    IServerConnection connection = _connectionFactory();
    // …
  }
}



No explicit configuration is required to use this feature: 


builder.RegisterType<FtpConnection>().As<IServerConnection>();
builder.RegisterType<UsesServer>();




By registering IServerConnection, Autofac 2 will automatically inject delegates that return type IServerConnection. 




If you are gaga over Autofac, go check it out. If not, you should be! 


 


 


 

											



					

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http://nblumhardt.com                Nicholas Blumhardt
            
        
    
        
    
            
    @Adam, you got it! The benefits really are:
    

     * T is a fully-fledged component, that can have dependencies etc
    
 * No infrastructure code needs to be written
    
 * If the delegate type accepts parameters these are handled smartly and make their way down to T
    

    All of these little features add up to making container use a low-friction experience, reducing the amount of time you have to think about how to manage a container instance and interact with it.
    

    
        
    

    
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                alwin
            
        
    
        
    
            
    Isn’t Hamilton, the creator of Castle Windsor on your team too? :)
    

    
        
    

    
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http://www.adamjwolf.com                Adam J Wolf
            
        
    
        
    
            
    I am a little confused about this feature. As I see it, you have removed the need for a developer to create and register a factory of type T in the container. Usually this factory will just new up a type of T and return it to the caller. 
    

    This should allow your constructer injected code to take a Func that will allow it to create a dependent type on demand by using the delegate instead of a type like ServerConnectionFactory.Create().
    

    So we get factories for free. No code or configuration of factories — if we use delegates for creating dependent types.  
    

    Cool, I think, am I missing something?
    

    

    
        
    

    
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http://nblumhardt.com                Nicholas Blumhardt
            
        
    
        
    
            
    Glad you like it :)
    

    Func<> is still jealous of PartCreator‘s support for metadata.
    

    
        
    

    
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