Dependency Injection pattern and Inversion of Control with C#

Understand the Object Dependency and Coupling:

When an object needs another object for a required task, then the first object is dependent on the second.

For example three objects, namely, X, Y, and Z. If object X is coupled to object Y, and Y is in turn coupled to Z, then object X is effectively coupled to object Z, i.e. it is dependent on Z. This behavior is known as transitivity.

There are two ways to couple the objects:

• Tight Coupling: In this, the objects are not independently reusable and hence are difficult to use effectively in unit test scenarios.
• Loose Coupling: In this scenario, an object is loosely coupled with another object, and you can change the coupling with ease and can be used easily in unit test scenarios.

Dependency Injection (DI):

The basic idea behind the Dependency Injection is to have a separate object and "Design must be loosely coupled". Dependency injection eliminates tight coupling between objects to make both the objects and applications that use them more flexible.

Key points about Dependency Injection (DI):

• It is also known as Inversion of Control (IOC) container.
• It can help you design your applications so that the architecture links the components rather than the components linking themselves.
• IOC provides a great way to reduce tight coupling between software components.
• The basic idea behind DI is design must be loosely coupled, loosely coupled means that objects should have only those dependencies that are required to complete their task, and the number of dependencies must be fewer.
• Loose coupling offers us greater reusability and testability.
• With the help of DI, we can achieve code maintainability.
• Object dependencies should be on the interface and not on "concrete" objects.
• It enables us to manage future changes and other complexity in our application.

There are three basic ways to implement the Dependency Injection:

• Construction Injection
• Setter Injection
• Interface Injection.

Constructor Injection

Constructor injection uses parameters to inject dependencies. It is the most common form of Dependency Injection. The basic idea behind this DI technique is passing an object's dependencies to its constructor. In the case of constructor-injection, the object has no default constructor and we need to pass specified values at the time of creation to instantiate the object.

Advantages of Constructor Injection:

• There is normally one parameterized constructor, but if you need more than one dependency for a class, you can define multiple constructors to achieve more than one dependency.
• It supports unit testing because dependencies can be passed through the constructor.
• We can make dependency immutable (to prevent circular dependency) immutable by making the dependency reference final.
• It makes a strong dependency contract.
• It emphasizes the importance of receiving a valid dependency and it’ll throw an exception if the null parameter is passed to the constructor.

Disadvantages of Constructor Injection:

• For legacy classes, we need to modify the constructor to implement DI, in this case, we need to modify all the constructor calls.
• To avoid changing all over the place we can create a new constructor and use it for future dependencies, but it’ll create confusion in which situation one should use one of two constructors.
• If the dependency is used rarely and is expensive to create, then we should avoid it passing to the constructor and better choose the Setter injector.

Example of Constructor Injection:

Create the IDbRepository interface and then create the DbRepository by implementing the IDbRepository interface.

Post that creates an object of IDbRepository interface and uses it inside the TestClient class.

Setter Injection

It is also known as Property Injection. In this, we do not need to pass the dependency through the constructor but dependencies are passed through public properties that are exposed.

Advantages of Setter Injection:

• It allows us to create dependency on expensive resources and with this, we can create dependency as late as possible and only when we need it.
• Setter Injection allows us to create dependencies for legacy classes without modifying the constructor and related constructor calls.

Disadvantages of Setter Injection:

• It is very difficult to identify which dependencies are required and when.
• It makes it a bit more difficult to track down the exception and the reason for the exception.

Example of Setter Injection:

Interface Injection

Another way of DI is Interface base Injection. Interface injection allows us to pass the dependency into a dependent object in the form of an interface, implemented by the dependent class. In this interface, one method is declared that is implemented by the dependent class. The dependencies are passed using the method's parameters at a time before the dependency is required.

We can implement Interface Injection in, either way, either constructor injection or setter injection. Advantages or disadvantages depend on which DI is selected for interface injection.

Interface Injection Components:

• IDependent interface: It defines the methods that inject one or more dependencies into the dependent class.
• Dependent Class: This class implements the IDependent interface.
• IDependency interface: It includes all dependency members that can be called from the Dependent class.
• Dependency Class: This class implements the IDependency interface and is used to substitute into a dependent class using Interface injection.

Example of Interface Injection:

Advantages of Dependency Injection pattern:

• With the help of DI tight coupling is eliminated.
• DI allows code reusability.
• It improves code readability and maintainability.
• It improves application testing.

DI Frameworks:

There are several DI frameworks available to help the developer. A few of them are mentioned below for usage and further studies:

• StructureMap: StructureMap is the oldest, continuously used IoC/DI container for .Net dating back to its first public release and production usage back in June 2004 on .Net 1.1. The current 4.* release represents 12+ years of lessons learned in the StructureMap and greater .Net community -- while also wiping away a great deal of legacy design decisions that no longer make sense today.
• Spring.NET: Spring.NET is an open-source application framework that makes building enterprise .NET applications easier. Spring helps increase development productivity and improve application quality and performance.
• Autofac: Autofac is an addictive Inversion of Control container for .NET Core, ASP.NET Core, .NET 4.5.1+, Universal Windows apps, and more.
• Castle Windsor: Castle Windsor is a best of breed, mature Inversion of Control container available for .NET.
• Ninject: Ninject is a lightning-fast, ultra-lightweight dependency injector for .NET applications. It helps you split your application into a collection of loosely coupled, highly cohesive pieces, and then glue them back together in a flexible manner.
• Unity: Unity Container is a full-featured, general-purpose IoC container for use in any type of .NET application. It is Open Source and released under Apache 2.0 license. However, this project is archived now and no longer be maintained, check here for more details.

That’s it for now guys, I hope you have enjoyed learning DI, your feedback and comments will be highly appreciated !!!

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Originally published at http://diary-techies.blogspot.com on September 09, 2013.