Castle Windsor ApiController Factory implementation for ASP.NET Web API

Question

I know it\'s possible to use DependencyResolver and register Castle Windsor with MVC but due to the issues described in https://stackoverflow.com/a/4889222/139392 we have st

Answer 1

Thanks to Critiano's post and some searching on-line I managed to get it to work here's the code for anyone else having this issue. I've fgot it working with MVC3 and ASP.NET Web Api Beta but I think the same solution should work for MVC4.

Firstly I created a WindsorHttpControllerFactory as the ApiControllers use a different factory than the MVC ones.

public class WindsorHttpControllerFactory : IHttpControllerFactory
{
    private readonly IKernel kernel;
    private readonly HttpConfiguration configuration;

    public WindsorHttpControllerFactory(IKernel kernel, HttpConfiguration configuration)
    {
        this.kernel = kernel;
        this.configuration = configuration;
    }

    public IHttpController CreateController(HttpControllerContext controllerContext, string controllerName)
    {
        if (controllerName == null)
        {
            throw new HttpException(404, string.Format("The controller for path '{0}' could not be found.", controllerContext.Request.RequestUri.AbsolutePath));
        }

        var controller = kernel.Resolve(controllerName);
        controllerContext.Controller = controller;
        controllerContext.ControllerDescriptor = new HttpControllerDescriptor(configuration, controllerName, controller.GetType());

        return controllerContext.Controller;
    }

    public void ReleaseController(IHttpController controller)
    {
        kernel.ReleaseComponent(controller);
    }
}

The tricky part was registration it seems to involved registering a whole bunch of other stuff. This is what I ended up with.

container.Register(Component.For().ImplementedBy().LifeStyle.Singleton);
container.Register(Component.For().ImplementedBy().LifeStyle.Singleton);
container.Register(Component.For().ImplementedBy().LifeStyle.Singleton);
container.Register(Component.For().ImplementedBy().LifeStyle.Transient);
container.Register(Component.For().ImplementedBy().LifeStyle.Transient);
container.Register(Component.For().ImplementedBy().LifeStyle.Transient);
container.Register(Component.For().ImplementedBy().LifeStyle.Transient);
container.Register(Component.For().ImplementedBy().LifeStyle.Transient);
container.Register(Component.For().Instance(configuration));

//Register all api controllers
container.Register(AllTypes.FromAssembly(assemblyToRegister)
                            .BasedOn()
                            .Configure(registration => registration.Named(registration.ServiceType.Name.ToLower().Replace("controller", "")).LifeStyle.Transient));

//Register WindsorHttpControllerFactory with Service resolver
GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.ServiceResolver.SetService(typeof(IHttpControllerFactory), container.Resolve());

I had to create my own implementation of an ILogger you could use a stub version like bellow.

public class MyLogger : System.Web.Http.Common.ILogger
{
    public void LogException(string category, TraceLevel level, Exception exception)
    {
        // Do some logging here eg. you could use log4net
    }

    public void Log(string category, TraceLevel level, Func messageCallback)
    {
        // Do some logging here eg. you could use log4net
    }
}