What is an IOC container actually doing for me here?

Question

So I've refactored completely to constructor injection, and now I have a bootstrapper class that looks similar to this:

var container = new UnityContainer();
container.RegisterType<Type1, Impl1>();
container.RegisterType<Type2, Impl2>();
container.RegisterType<Type3, Impl3>();
container.RegisterType<Type4, Impl4>();

var type4Impl = container.Resolve((typeof)Type4) as Type4;
type4Impl.Run();

I stared at it for a second before realizing that Unity is really not doing anything special here for me. Leaving out the ctor sigs, the above could be written as:

Type1 type1Impl = Impl1();
Type2 type2Impl = Impl2();
Type3 type3Impl = Impl3(type1Impl, type2Impl);
Type4 type4Impl = Impl4(type1Impl, type3Impl);
type4Impl.Run();

The constructor injection refactoring is great and really opens up the testability of the code. However, I'm doubting the usefulness of Unity here. I realize I may be using the framework in a limited manner (ie not injecting the container anywhere, configuring in code rather than XML, not taking advantage of lifetime management options), but I am failing to see how it is actually helping in this example. I've read more than one comment with the sentiment that DI is better off simply used as a pattern, without a container. Is this a good example of that situation? What other benefits does this solution provide that I am missing out on?

Answer 1

I have found that a DI container becomes valuable when you have many types in the container that are dependent on each other. It is at that point that the auto-wire-up capability of a container shines.

If you find that you are referring to the container when you are getting object out of, then you are really following the Service Locator pattern.

Answer 2

To some extent you're right. Inversion of control does not need to mean using IoC container at all. If your object graph is small enough and convenient enough to be created at once in some kind of bootstrapping code, that's inversion of control, too.

But using an IoC tools simplifies the object creation in case of more complex scenarios. Using IoC tools you can manage object lifecycles, compose your object graph from different configurations or when not the whole graph is known at compile time, easily defer the object creation etc. etc.

There is no general solution. Everything depends from your specific needs. For a simple project with few classes, using IoC can be more annoying than helpful. For a big project I can't even imagine how the bootstrapping code need to look like.

Answer 3

The difference is that you are doing the dependency injection instead of Unity doing dependency injection. In your example, you would have to know what types need to be created coupling your code to those types. You now need to know in your code that Impl1 should be created whenever you need a Type1.

Answer 4

See my post here for an extensive response to this question.

Most of the other answers here are correct, and say pretty much the same thing. I would add that most IoC containers allow you to auto-bind types to themselves, or use binding by convention. If you set up Unity to do that, then you can get rid of all that binding code entirely.

Answer 5

Here's a simple code illustration of what other's have said (albeit taking a few liberties, property injection instead of constructor injection and assuming you've registered your types, etc).

public interface IFoo { }
public interface IBar { IFoo FooImpl { get; set; } }
public interface IBaz { IBar BarImpl { get; set; } }
public interface IBat { IBaz BazImpl { get; set; } }

As your object graph grows and dependencies are nested further and further down the graph, you'll have to provide the whole tree:

var bat = new Bat{
        BazImpl = new BazImpl() {
                    BarImpl = new BarImpl() {
                        FooImpl = new FooImpl()
                        }
                    }
                };

However, if you use the container correctly, all of that resolution comes based on what you've registered:

var bat = container.Resolve<IBat>()

Answer 6

Much like the other answers have probably stated, an IoC container is not required to perform dependency injection. It simply provides for automated dependency injection. If you don't get much of an advantage from the automation, then don't worry too much about a container, especially at the entry point of your application where you're injecting the initial objects.

There are however some things an IoC can make easier:

• Lazy initialization. Autofac and a few others (not sure about Unity) can detect a constructor that takes a Func<IMyDependency> and, given a registration for an IDependency, will automatically generate the appropriate factory method. This reduces the front-loading often required in a DI system, where a lot of big objects like repositories have to be initialized and passed into the top-level object.
• Sub-dependency hiding. Say class A needs to instantiate a class B, and B needs C, but A shouldn't know about C. Maybe even class Z which created A can't even know about C. This is the thing for which IoCs were created; throw A, B and C into the container, shake it up and resolve a fully-hydrated B to give to A, or a factory method which can be injected into A (automatically) and which the A can use to create all the B references it wants.
• Simple "singletoning". Instead of creating and using a static singleton, an IoC can be told to create and return one and only one instance of any registered dependency no matter how many times that dependency is asked for. This allows the developer to turn any ordinary instance class into a singleton for use in the container, with no code change to the class itself required.

Answer 7

Your example is very simple, and the object graph would be very easily managable without using a DI framework. If this is really the extent of what is needed, doing manual DI would work fine.

The value of using a DI framework goes up very quickly as the dependency graph becomes more complex.