How to use Castle Windsor with ASP.Net web forms?

Question

I am trying to wire up dependency injection with Windsor to standard asp.net web forms. I think I have achieved this using a HttpModule and a CustomAttribute (code shown below), although the solution seems a little clunky and was wondering if there is a better supported solution out of the box with Windsor?

There are several files all shown together here

    // index.aspx.cs
    public partial class IndexPage : System.Web.UI.Page
    {
        protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            Logger.Write("page loading");
        }

        [Inject]
        public ILogger Logger { get; set; }
    }

    // WindsorHttpModule.cs
    public class WindsorHttpModule : IHttpModule
    {
        private HttpApplication _application;
        private IoCProvider _iocProvider;

        public void Init(HttpApplication context)
        {
            _application = context;
            _iocProvider = context as IoCProvider;

            if(_iocProvider == null)
            {
                throw new InvalidOperationException("Application must implement IoCProvider");
            }

            _application.PreRequestHandlerExecute += InitiateWindsor;
        }

        private void InitiateWindsor(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
        {
            Page currentPage = _application.Context.CurrentHandler as Page;
            if(currentPage != null)
            {
                InjectPropertiesOn(currentPage);
                currentPage.InitComplete += delegate { InjectUserControls(currentPage); };
            }
        }

        private void InjectUserControls(Control parent)
        {
            if(parent.Controls != null)
            {
                foreach (Control control in parent.Controls)
                {
                    if(control is UserControl)
                    {
                        InjectPropertiesOn(control);
                    }
                    InjectUserControls(control);
                }
            }
        }

        private void InjectPropertiesOn(object currentPage)
        {
            PropertyInfo[] properties = currentPage.GetType().GetProperties();
            foreach(PropertyInfo property in properties)
            {
                object[] attributes = property.GetCustomAttributes(typeof (InjectAttribute), false);
                if(attributes != null && attributes.Length > 0)
                {
                    object valueToInject = _iocProvider.Container.Resolve(property.PropertyType);
                    property.SetValue(currentPage, valueToInject, null);
                }
            }
        }
    }

    // Global.asax.cs
    public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication, IoCProvider
    {
        private IWindsorContainer _container;

        public override void Init()
        {
            base.Init();

            InitializeIoC();
        }

        private void InitializeIoC()
        {
            _container = new WindsorContainer();
            _container.AddComponent<ILogger, Logger>();
        }

        public IWindsorContainer Container
        {
            get { return _container; }
        }
    }

    public interface IoCProvider
    {
        IWindsorContainer Container { get; }
    }

Answer 1

I think you're basically on the right track - If you have not already I would suggest taking a look at Rhino Igloo, an WebForms MVC framework, Here's a good blog post on this and the source is here - Ayende (the Author of Rhino Igloo) tackles the issue of using Windsor with webforms quite well in this project/library.

I would cache the reflection info if you're going to inject the entire nested set of controls, that could end up being a bit of a performance hog I suspect.

Last of all spring.net approaches this in a more configuration-oriented way, but it might be worth taking a look at their implementation - here's a good reference blog post on this.

Answer 2

Rather than doing it like this, you could also use a type resolver directly with something like:

ILogger Logger = ResolveType.Of<ILogger>();