C# – Dependency Injection in WebAPI with Castle Windsor

CodeCaster, Noctis and Cristiano thank you for all your help and guidance.. I just got the solution for my above query -

The first step is to use nuget to install the Windsor.Castle packages in the WebApi solution.

Consider the following code snippet -

Interface IWatch.cs

public interface IWatch
{
     DateTime GetTime();
}

Class Watch.cs

public class Watch:IWatch
{
    public DateTime GetTime()
    {
        return DateTime.Now;
    }
}

The ApiController WatchController.cs is defined as follows: -

public class WatchController : ApiController
{
     private readonly IWatch _watch;

     public WatchController(IWatch watch)
     {
         _watch = watch;
     }

     public string Get()
     {
         var message = string.Format("The current time on the server is: {0}", _watch.GetTime());
         return message;
     }
}

In the controller we have injected the dependency through IWatch object in the WatchController constructor. I have used IDependencyResolver and IDependencyScope to achieve dependency injection in web api. The IDependencyResolver interface is used to resolve everything outside a request scope.

WindsorDependencyResolver.cs

internal sealed class WindsorDependencyResolver : IDependencyResolver
{
    private readonly IWindsorContainer _container;

    public WindsorDependencyResolver(IWindsorContainer container)
    {
        if (container == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("container");
        }

        _container = container;
    }
    public object GetService(Type t)
    {
        return _container.Kernel.HasComponent(t) ? _container.Resolve(t) : null;
    }

    public IEnumerable<object> GetServices(Type t)
    {
        return _container.ResolveAll(t).Cast<object>().ToArray();
    }

    public IDependencyScope BeginScope()
    {
        return new WindsorDependencyScope(_container);
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {

    }
}

WindsorDependencyScope.cs

internal sealed class WindsorDependencyScope : IDependencyScope
{
    private readonly IWindsorContainer _container;
    private readonly IDisposable _scope;

    public WindsorDependencyScope(IWindsorContainer container)
    {
        if (container == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("container");
        }
        _container = container;
        _scope = container.BeginScope();
    }

    public object GetService(Type t)
    {
        return _container.Kernel.HasComponent(t) ? _container.Resolve(t) : null;
    }

    public IEnumerable<object> GetServices(Type t)
    {
        return _container.ResolveAll(t).Cast<object>().ToArray();
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        _scope.Dispose();
    }
}

WatchInstaller.cs

Installers are simply types that implement the IWindsorInstaller interface. The interface has a single method called Install. The method gets an instance of the container, which it can then register components with using fluent registration API:

public class WatchInstaller : IWindsorInstaller
{
      public void Install(IWindsorContainer container, IConfigurationStore store)
      {
      //Need to Register controllers explicitly in your container
      //Failing to do so Will receive Exception:

      //> An error occurred when trying to create //a controller of type
      //> 'xxxxController'. Make sure that the controller has a parameterless
      //> public constructor.

      //Reason::Basically, what happened is that you didn't register your controllers explicitly in your container. 
      //Windsor tries to resolve unregistered concrete types for you, but because it can't resolve it (caused by an error in your configuration), it return null.
      //It is forced to return null, because Web API forces it to do so due to the IDependencyResolver contract. 
      //Since Windsor returns null, Web API will try to create the controller itself, but since it doesn't have a default constructor it will throw the "Make sure that the controller has a parameterless public constructor" exception.
      //This exception message is misleading and doesn't explain the real cause.

      container.Register(Classes.FromThisAssembly()
                            .BasedOn<IHttpController>()
                            .LifestylePerWebRequest());***
          container.Register(
              Component.For<IWatch>().ImplementedBy<Watch>()
          );
      }
}

Finally, we need to replace the default dependency resolver with the Windsor implementation in Global.asax.cs (Application_Start method) and install our dependencies:

    private static IWindsorContainer _container;
    protected void Application_Start()
    {
        AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();

        WebApiConfig.Register(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration);
        FilterConfig.RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);
        RouteConfig.RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
        BundleConfig.RegisterBundles(BundleTable.Bundles);

        ConfigureWindsor(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration);
    }

    public static void ConfigureWindsor(HttpConfiguration configuration)
    {
        _container = new WindsorContainer();
        _container.Install(FromAssembly.This());
        _container.Kernel.Resolver.AddSubResolver(new CollectionResolver(_container.Kernel, true));
        var dependencyResolver = new WindsorDependencyResolver(_container);
        configuration.DependencyResolver = dependencyResolver;
    }