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Can I load controllers in Monorail using MEF?

Answer 1

+1 A:

It's not something you can use yet, but have a look at Hammett's blog post here, where he talks about what he is prototyping for MonoRail 3.0 (including support for MEF by default).

Daniel Plaisted 2010-09-16 01:28:18

Looks promising. Could be a while until released/stable though

Tim 2010-09-19 21:52:20

Answer 2

+1 A:

Monorail is a very extensible framework. Almost everything is being provided by a service that can be easily switched with something else. For e.g., IoC integration is quite easy, as you can switch the services that creates controllers, filters, helpers, and all other MonoRail entities.

Concrete example: Integrating Windsor container into Monorail

Now this sets up almost everything in the Monorail to be provided by Windsor. If you only want Controllers to be provided by MEF, there's even less work.

I have very little working knowledge of MEF so it might be a little off, but you'd get the general idea:

Use MEF discovery mechanisms to locate controller types, then add controller types to the default IControllerTree service. take a peek at MonoRailFacility.cs for inspiration.
Implement a MefControllerFactory : IControllerFactory that will use MEF to instantiate controllers when needed. Inspiration is at WindsorControllerFactory.cs

Ken Egozi 2010-09-16 07:06:15

This page (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hammett/archive/2009/04/23/mef-and-asp-net-mvc-sample.aspx) has helped me for IControllerFactory. But MonoRailFacility appears to access the default IControllerTree through Windsor. How should I be accessing it?

Tim 2010-09-19 21:51:36

I believe that you need to access a Mef Catalog instead of Windsor's implementation of IControllerTree, for supplying you with controllers.Hammet's example has a MecControllerCatalog for reference.I do not have much Mef experience, so the details of that parts won't come from me, sorry :)

Ken Egozi 2010-09-20 05:05:10

Hammet's MefControllerFactory does the MEF loading. But MR only looks in the default IControllerTree service for controllers. Looks like I could either write my own IControllerTree service, or add controllers to the existing one. Looks like http://hammett.castleproject.org/?p=159 and section "Adding controllers and views in runtime" is pointing me in the right direction. If my MefControllerFactory overrides Service(System.IServiceProvider service) then I can just: IControllerTree tree = service.GetService(typeof(IControllerTree)); tree.AddController("area", "Home", typeof(MyCoolController));

Tim 2010-09-20 13:34:25

MefControllerFactory would obviously have to inherit AbstractControllerFactory...

Tim 2010-09-20 13:37:40

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Can I load controllers in Monorail using MEF?

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