0

Does anyone know of any applications that are currently using MEF? I'm looking for a good program to derive some idea on using MEF and seeing how others are using it will help me out a lot -- obviously this means open source programs would be favored.

mlw4428
  • 510
  • 1
  • 6
  • 21
  • Quick google for "mef demos" brought up a [silverlight-based example](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/joen/archive/2010/01/24/great-demo-of-mef.aspx). Looking for something specific? – Brad Christie Apr 09 '13 at 16:54
  • Maybe something w/ winforms. – mlw4428 Apr 09 '13 at 17:03
  • Can't help on the open source front, but I use MEF a lot in our commercial products. Self-assembling data processing pipelines composed of optional modules, etc. – dthorpe Apr 09 '13 at 17:25
  • I'm looking at implementing plug-in functionality with MEF. My understanding is that is partially what this platform is designed to do...I was curious about having forms built-in to the plugins so that they could generate additional UI components for use without the main application having to know much about those. – mlw4428 Apr 09 '13 at 17:33
  • Yes! Absolutely. MEF is designed to bring in things that you don't know about at the time you build your application (i.e. plugins). [Here is a SO post that talks a little about it](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/216565/why-exactly-isnt-mef-a-di-ioc-container) – Nick Freeman Apr 09 '13 at 18:04

1 Answers1

3

Visual Studio itself uses MEF for editor extensions you could look into how some of these are written.

Also there is a project developed by Microsoft Patterns and Practices that is called Prism, which can use MEF for its DI. It is set up to be used with WPF, but as Glenn Block shows here it can be used with WinForms as well.

I have used a variation of Prism with MEF on my projects before and have been satisfied with the results.

Nick Freeman
  • 1,411
  • 1
  • 12
  • 25