Why are my controllers being instantiated when they're not being called?

Question

Here are the symptoms I am experiencing:

I have a brand new empty controller in an area:

public class JamController : Controller
{
    public JamCo         


        

Answer 1

Turns out that the SetControllerFactory method below is causing the issue:

// Tell MVC3 to use MEF as its dependency resolver.
var dependencyResolver = new CompositionDependencyResolver(catalog);
DependencyResolver.SetResolver(dependencyResolver);

// Tell MVC3 to resolve dependencies in controllers
ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(
    new CompositionControllerFactory(
        new CompositionControllerActivator(dependencyResolver)));

Commenting out the "Tell MVC3 to resolve dependencies in controllers" section fixes my issue, and no controllers except those I ask for get instantiated. Luckily, that's only needed if you're not using the standard Asp.Net controller resolution (and we are).