Singleton with StructureMap custom convention in ASP.NET MVC 4 - asp.net-mvc-4

I am having an issue trying to get the singleton lifecycle to work with a custom convention in StructureMap.
Basically I have a custom registry type class that contains a dictionary that I would like to be a singleton so that it is created once at startup of the application.
I created a custom convention that will look at an attribute of a class and determine whether or not the class should be HttpContextScoped or Singleton.
The problem is that when I run the application with the Visual Studio debugger the constructor of the object that should be a singleton gets called every time the web page is loaded instead of happening once as I expected. It looks like the object is behaving as a HttpContextScoped instead of a Singleton.
Here are some details:
StructuremapMvc class in app_start folder
public static class StructuremapMvc
{
public static void Start()
{
IContainer container = IoC.Initialize();
DependencyResolver.SetResolver(new StructureMapDependencyResolver(container));
GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.DependencyResolver = new StructureMapDependencyResolver(container);
}
}
Ioc class
public static IContainer Initialize()
ObjectFactory.Initialize(x =>
{
x.Scan(scan =>
{
scan.TheCallingAssembly();
scan.AssemblyContainingType<IConfigManager>();
scan.WithDefaultConventions();
scan.Convention<CustomConvention>();
});
CustomConvention : IRegistrationConvention
public void Process(Type type, Registry registry) public void Process(Type type, Registry registry)
{
var attributes = type.GetCustomAttributes(false);
if (attributes.Length > 0)
{
if (attributes[0] is SingletonAttribute)
{
registry.For(type).Singleton();
}
else if (attributes[0] is HttpContextScopedAttribute)
{
registry.For(type).HttpContextScoped();
}
}
}
[Singleton]
public class MyRegistry : IMyRegistry

This questions seems to be quite old but I'll trie to answer it anyway because there could be others which are experiencing the same problem with Structure map. In some cases singleton insances are created "per instance" referring to the instance where they are injected in. This means that you could have different instances of "singleton" when they are injected somewhere else. I've personally seen this behavior with WEBAPI inside MVC app.
The only way I could make it work as "true" global singleton is by using generic interface with specific type parameters to distinguish different types to be used:
public interface ITest<T>
{
}
public class Test1 : ITest<int>
{
}
public class Test2 : ITest<string>
{
}
Scan(x =>
{
x.TheCallingAssembly();
x.IncludeNamespace("MvcApplication1");
x.ConnectImplementationsToTypesClosing(typeof(ITest<>))
.OnAddedPluginTypes(a => a.LifecycleIs(InstanceScope.Singleton));
});
I know that this isn't as ellegant nor usable as approach described above but at least it works as expected. Other approach which works is to do standard mapping one-on-one like:
For<ISingleton>().Singleton().Use<Singleton>();

Related

How to improve factory approach to be able to register dependencies in a right way

I need a code refactoring advice. I have a class which contains several dependencies. I will just provide a constructor, but this should be enough. The class implements this interface:
public interface ITopicPublisher<T> {}
and the class itself:
public class TopicPublisher<T> : ITopicPublisher<T>
{
public TopicPublisher(IEventGridClient eventGridClient, string topicEndpoint) { ... }
}
Now, the instance of this class is injected to the Controllers like this:
public class SomeController : Controller
{
public SomeController(ITopicPublisher<MyEntity> publisher) { ... }
}
in order to create EventGridClient, I need to construct it like this (where key is a simple string):
new EventGridClient(new TopicCredentials(key))
Now, the topicEndpoint and key are taken from Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable(...). It all now is problematic when registering dependencies in ASP.NET (2.2) Startup.cs.
builder.Services
.AddScoped(x => new TopicPublisher<MyEntity>(new EventGridClient(
new TopicCredentials(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("KEY"))),
Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("ENDPOINT")))
I didn't like it, so I created a factory, like this:
public class EnvironmentVariableTopicPublisherFactory
{
public static ITopicPublisher<T> Create<T>(string topicUrlEnvironmentVariable, string keyEnvironmentVariable) where T : class =>
new TopicPublisher<T>(new EventGridClient(new TopicCredentials(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable(keyEnvironmentVariable))),
Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable(topicUrlEnvironmentVariable));
}
and now the registration process seem to be a little more simple:
builder.Services
.AddScoped(x => EnvironmentVariableTopicPublisherFactory.Create<MyEntity>("ENDPOINT", "KEY"))
I have some concerns however, that I could do it better. Could you give me some hint, how this approach can be made more clean, if this is possible?

ASP.NET 5 Controller dependency injection of concrete class with no interface in to controller

Is it possible to use StructureMap to scan assemblies to be aware of concrete classes that do not implement interfaces? I am fairly new to StructureMap so not sure if this should be an obvious thing.
For context, below are the highlights of the classes I am working with. UserController depends on an instance of UserManager which depends on an instance of IUserRepository.
public interface IUserRepository { }
public class UserRepository { }
public class UserManager
{
public UserManager(IUserRepository repository) { }
}
public class UserController
{
public UserController(UserManager manager) { }
}
This is the code I have in my Startup.ConfigureServices method to do the scanning for DI:
// Setup dependencies using StructureMap
var container = new Container(x =>
{
x.Scan(s =>
{
s.AssemblyContainingType<UserRepository>();
s.WithDefaultConventions();
});
});
container.Populate(services);
The problem is I get the following error:
Unable to resolve service for type 'UserManager' while attempting to
activate 'UserController'.
If I add the following line to Startup.ConfigureServices then it works, but I am looking for a solution that doesn't require me to have a line for every manager. I have been thinking StructureMap assembly scanning could solve this but I am open to other solutions as well.
services.AddTransient<UserManager>();
Add .AddControllersAsServices() extention method to your services.AddMvc() call.
Result:
services.AddMvc().AddControllersAsServices();

Why can't I use Get<ClassNameOfConcreteInstance> as a method name in Ninject Extension Factory?

Look at this very simple example: Calling CreateCar it works, calling GetCar it fails, saying "Error activating ICar: No matching bindings are available, and the type is not self-bindable".
public interface ICar { }
public class Car : ICar
{
public Car(string carType) { }
}
public interface ICarFactory
{
ICar CreateCar(string carType); // this is fine
ICar GetCar(string carType); // this is bad
}
public class CarModule : NinjectModule
{
public override void Load()
{
Bind<ICarFactory>().ToFactory();
Bind<ICar>().To<Car>();
}
}
public class Program
{
public static void Main()
{
using (var kernel = new StandardKernel(new FuncModule(), new CarModule()))
{
var factory = kernel.Get<ICarFactory>();
var car1 = factory.CreateCar("a type");
var car2 = factory.GetCar("another type");
}
}
}
Is assume it must be related to some kind of convention with Get*ClassName* (something like the NamedLikeFactoryMethod stuff). Is there any way to avoid this convention to be applied? I don't need it and I don't want it (I already wasted too much time trying to figure out why the binding was failing, it was just luck that I made a typo in 1 of my 10 factories and I noticed it to work just because the factory method name was "Ger" instead of "Get").
Thanks!
Yes, there is a convention, where the Get is used to obtain instances using a named binding. The factory extension generates code for you so you don't have to create boilerplate code for factories. You don't need to use it, if you don't want to.
But if you do, you are bound to its conventions. Use Create to build instances and Get to retrieve instances via a named binding.
All this is documented in the wiki.

MVC4 unit test and windows authentication

As far as I see, unless my mvc4 app uses windows authentication (and so my controllers tries to read the User objects) when I create my controller instance from a TestMethod, the User object remains null. So my tests fails. What can I do to get them work?
Additional informations:
This is my test:
[TestMethod]
public void Create()
{
var ctrl = new LanguageController();
var res = ctrl.Manage() as ViewResult;
Assert.IsNotNull(res);
Assert.AreEqual(res.ViewName, "Create");
}
And my LanguageController has a base class:
public class LanguageController : MyController
{
Which has a constructor, inside it I try to discover the user rights by an external Right Manager.
public class MyController : Controller
{
protected Rights rm;
public MyController()
{
this.rm = RightManager.Discover(User.Identity);
}
Here in this constructor I see the User is null.
Okay, there are few issues with your Unit test and I will go through them as I explain why the User is null.
It is simply because you haven't provide a stubbed version of the User (IPrincipal) instance. So you need to find a way to inject that into your Controller. It is important you externalize as much dependencies in your Controller so it provides not a clean Controller to work with but also and importantly promote the testability.
What I would do inject the dependencies as below.
Your SUT (System Under Test)
public class MyController : Controller
{
protected Rights rm;
public MyController(IPrincipal user, IRightManager rightManager)
{
this.rm = rightManager.Discover(user.Identity);
}
}
public class LanguageController : MyController
{
public LanguageController(IPrincipal user, IRightManager rightManager)
: base(user, rightManager)
{
}
public ActionResult Manage()
{
return View("Manage");
}
}
This gives me the ability to inject a fake User and also a fake Right Manager.
So how would you get the real User, RightManager when you run the application at runtime?
You can inject the dependencies to the Controller during the Controller creation.
If you don't use a dependency injection framework (Ideally you should), you can still inject dependencies in a manual way. For example, creating property in your Controller and inject the real instance in the Controller, and during the Unit Testing time inject the fake instance etc. I won't go into detail as I'm deviating a bit - but you can find lot SO questions/web references in regards to this aspect.
Your Unit test
Now you have a way to inject your dependencies you can easily inject them from your Unit test. You can either using an Isolation framework (AKA and Mock object framework) or you can inject them as the old school way - which is the Hand written mocks/fakes/stubs. I suggest using an Isolation framework. Creating manual fakes, introduces unnecessary code duplication and maintenance issue. Since I don't know which framework you prefer, I created few handwritten fakes/mocks/stubs.
public class FakeRightManager : IRightManager {
public Rights Discover(IIdentity identity) {
return new Rights();
}
}
public class MyFakeIdentity : IIdentity {
public string AuthenticationType {
get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}
public bool IsAuthenticated {
get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}
public string Name {
get { throw new NotImplementedException(); }
}
}
public class MyFakePrincipal : IPrincipal {
public IIdentity Identity {
get { return new MyFakeIdentity(); }
}
public bool IsInRole(string role) {
throw new NotImplementedException();
}
}
You Unit Test :
[TestMethod]
public void ManageAction_Execute_ReturnsViewNameManager()
{
var fakeUser = new MyFakePrincipal();
var fakeRightManager = new FakeRightManager();
var ctrl = new LanguageController(fakeUser, fakeRightManager);
var res = ctrl.Manage() as ViewResult;
Assert.AreEqual<string>(res.ViewName, "Manage");
}
In your test you check for Assert.IsNotNull(res); this not necessary as if the res is null your second assert going to fail anyway.
Also always give a very descriptive precise Unit Test name. Reflect what you exactly testing. It improves the test readability and maintainability.

Ninject property binding, how to do correctly

I have installed Ninject (v4.0.30319) package in test project to test. Create test code below, unfortunately ValidateAbuse.Instance.Repository is always Null. Why Ninject do not bind repository to ValidateAbuse.Repository property?
Some of you may suggest to use constructor binding but I can't use it due to code structure. The below code is just example and I need to find a way to bind to property.
Test method which always fail
[TestMethod]
public void PropertyInjection()
{
using (IKernel kernel = new StandardKernel())
{
kernel.Bind<ISettingsRepository>().To<SettingsRepository>();
Assert.IsNotNull(ValidateAbuse.Instance.Repository);
}
}
The repository interface
public interface ISettingsRepository
{
List<string> GetIpAbuseList();
List<string> GetSourceAbuseList();
}
The repository implementation
public class SettingsRepository : ISettingsRepository
{
public List<string> GetIpAbuseList()
{
return DataAccess.Instance.Abuses.Where(p => p.TypeId == 1).Select(p => p.Source).ToList();
}
public List<string> GetSourceAbuseList()
{
return DataAccess.Instance.Abuses.Where(p => p.TypeId == 2).Select(p => p.Source).ToList();
}
}
The class to which I am trying to bind repository
public class ValidateAbuse
{
[Inject]
public ISettingsRepository Repository { get; set; }
public static ValidateAbuse Instance = new ValidateAbuse();
}
Ninject will only bind properties on an object when it creates an instance of that object. Since you are creating the instance of ValidateAbuse rather than Ninject creating it, it won't know anything about it and therefore be unable to set the property values upon creation.
EDIT:
You should remove the static singleton from ValidateAbuse and allow Ninject to manage it as a singleton.
kernel.Bind<ValidateAbuse>().ToSelf().InSingletonScope();
Then when you ask Ninject to create any class that needs an instance of ValidateAbuse, it will always get the same instance.
It seems like you don't fully understand how Ninject works or how to implement it so I would suggest you read the wiki https://github.com/ninject/ninject/wiki/How-Injection-Works and follow some more basic examples before trying to wire it into an existing application.