asp.net mvc - Autofac: any way to resolve the innermost scope?

Question

I'm currently trying out Autofac in a new ASP.NET MVC project after having used Ninject, Castle Windsor and other IoC containers in the last years. So while I know about IoC containers in general, I'm fairly new to Autofac and I'm still looking for some best practices.

Currently I'm trying to find out if there is a way to resolve the innermost nested scope.

I have the following situation: a component that is registered as SingleInstance() has a method that creates a nested lifetime scope, providing a configuration action to configure some components as InstancePerLifetimeScope, and within this nested scope resolves the registered components to do something useful, like so:

ILifetimeScope currentScope = ???;

using (var scope = currentScope.BeginLifetimeScope(cb => {
  cb.RegisterType<X>().InstancePerLifetimeScope();
  // ...
}))
{
    var comp = scope.Resolve<X>();
    // ...
}

The issue is that I would like currentScope to be the innermost lifetime scope, because I know that X depends on components inside the innermost scope. In the simplest case that would be e.g. the current request lifetime scope. I can of course get it with AutofacDependencyResolver.Current.RequestLifetimeScope but I don't want to use that as it isn't really well testable. Also, that lifetime scope isn't necessarily the innermost.

So, is there a way to find the innermost lifetime scope given e.g. the root container or a different ILifetimeScope?

Answer 1

In Autofac, the innermost scope is always the container. Using the AutofacDependencyResolver, it'd be AutofacDependencyResolver.Current.ApplicationContainer

There is no way from a nested scope (if all you have is an ILifetimeScope) to "walk backward" to get to the container. I'm not necessarily sure you want to do that, anyway.

It sounds like your SingleInstance component is doing some sort of service location, basically, with manual registration/resolution of certain components. If the set of types being registered is fixed, I might recommend (if possible) some redesign of your system, so the SingleInstance component isn't registered as SingleInstance anymore and instead gets registered as InstancePerDependency, then have that take these other items in as constructor parameters.

Instead of...

// Consuming class like this...
public class BigComponent
{
  public void DoSomethingCool()
  {
    using(var scope = ...)
    {
      var c = scope.Resolve<SubComponent>();
      c.DoWork();
    }
  }
}

// ...and container registrations like this...
builder.RegisterType<BigComponent>().SingleInstance();

You might try inverting it a bit:

// Consuming class like this...
public class BigComponent
{
  private SubComponent _c;
  public BigComponent(SubComponent c)
  {
    _c = c;
  }
  public void DoSomethingCool()
  {
    _c.DoWork();
  }
}

// ...and container registrations like this...
builder.RegisterType<BigComponent>().InstancePerDependency();
builder.RegisterType<SubComponent>().InstancePerLifetimeScope();

The idea is to not have to do the on-the-fly registration-and-immediate-resolution thing.

If you're stuck doing service location, you'll need to use AutofacDependencyResolver.Current.ApplicationContainer if you need the absolute innermost scope, but keep in mind any objects you register scoped to InstancePerHttpRequest will not be resolvable if you do that, so you could get into trouble. It really is recommended to use the AutofacDependencyResolver.Current.RequestLifetimeScope instead. That would make your method:

var requestScope = AutofacDependencyResolver.Current.RequestLifetimeScope;
using (var scope = requestScope.BeginLifetimeScope(cb => {
  cb.RegisterType<X>().InstancePerLifetimeScope();
  // ...
}))
{
    var comp = scope.Resolve<X>();
    // ...
}

In a testing environment, the AutofacDependencyResolver lets you swap in the provider that dictates how request lifetimes get generated. You can implement a simple/stub one like this:

public class TestLifetimeScopeProvider : ILifetimeScopeProvider
{
    readonly ILifetimeScope _container;
    private ILifetimeScope _lifetimeScope = null;

    public TestLifetimeScopeProvider(ILifetimeScope container)
    {
        if (container == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("container");
        _container = container;
    }

    public ILifetimeScope ApplicationContainer
    {
        get { return _container; }
    }

    public ILifetimeScope GetLifetimeScope()
    {
        if (_lifetimeScope == null)
        {
            _lifetimeScope = ApplicationContainer.BeginLifetimeScope("httpRequest")
        }
        return _lifetimeScope;
    }

    public void EndLifetimeScope()
    {
        if (_lifetimeScope != null)
            _lifetimeScope.Dispose();
    }
}

Again, just a stub for unit testing, not something you'd ever use in production.

Then when you wire up the DependencyResolver in your test, you provide your lifetime scope provider:

var lsProvider = new TestLifetimeScopeProvider(container);
var resolver = new AutofacDependencyResolver(container, lsProvider);
DependencyResolver.SetResolver(resolver);

This lets you use InstancePerHttpRequest and such inside unit tests without actually having a real request context. It also means you should be able to use the request lifetime scope in your registration/resolution method and not have to fall back on the application container.