Constructor parameters for controllers without a DI container for ASP.NET MVC

Question

Does anyone have any code examples on how to create controllers that have parameters other than using a Dependency Injection Container?

I see plenty of samples with using containers like StructureMap, but nothing if you wanted to pass in the dependency class yourself.

Answer 1

You can use poor-man's dependency injection:

public ProductController() : this( new Foo() )
{
  //the framework calls this
}

public ProductController(IFoo foo)
{
  _foo = foo;
}

Answer 2

You can create an IModelBinder that spins up an instance from a factory - or, yes, the container. =)

Answer 3

Creative approach LOL. I would suspect that MS will eventually add a easier mechanism for doing this if we didn't want to depend on a third party open source codebase (DI container).

Answer 4

One way is to create a ControllerFactory:

public class MyControllerFactory : DefaultControllerFactory
{
    public override IController CreateController(
        RequestContext requestContext, string controllerName)
    {
        return [construct your controller here] ;
    }
}

Then, in Global.asax.cs:

    private void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);
        ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(
            new MyNamespace.MyControllerFactory());
    }