In a MVC3-application with Ninject.MVC 2.2.0.3 (after merge), instead of injecting repostories directly into controllers I'm trying to make a service-layer that contain the businesslogic and inject the repostories there. I pass the ninject-DependencyResolver to the service-layer as a dynamic object (since I don't want to reference mvc nor ninject there). Then I call GetService on it to get repositories with the bindings and lifetimes I specify in NinjectHttpApplicationModule. EDIT: In short, it failed.
How can the IoC-container be passed to the service-layer in this case? (Different approaches are also very welcome.)
EDIT: Here is an example to illustrate how I understand the answer and comments.
I should avoid the service locator (anti-)pattern and instead use dependency injection. So lets say I want to create an admin-site for Products and Categories in Northwind. I create models, repositories, services, controllers and views according to the table-definitions. The services call directly to the repositories at this point, no logic there. I have pillars of functionality and the views show raw data. These bindings are configured for NinjectMVC3:
private static void RegisterServices(IKernel kernel)
{
kernel.Bind<ICategoryRepository>().To<CategoryRepository>();
kernel.Bind<IProductRepository>().To<ProductRepository>();
}
Repository-instances are created by ninject via two layers of constructor injection, in the ProductController:
private readonly ProductsService _productsService;
public ProductController(ProductsService productsService)
{
// Trimmed for this post: nullchecks with throw ArgumentNullException
_productsService = productsService;
}
and ProductsService:
protected readonly IProductRepository _productRepository;
public ProductsService(IProductRepository productRepository)
{
_productRepository = productRepository;
}
I have no need to decouple the services for now but have prepared for mocking the db.
To show a dropdown of categories in Product/Edit I make a ViewModel that holds the categories in addition to the Product:
public class ProductViewModel
{
public Product Product { get; set; }
public IEnumerable<Category> Categories { get; set; }
}
The ProductsService now needs a CategoriesRepository to create it.
private readonly ICategoryRepository _categoryRepository;
// Changed constructor to take the additional repository
public ProductsServiceEx(IProductRepository productRepository,
ICategoryRepository categoryRepository)
{
_productRepository = productRepository;
_categoryRepository = categoryRepository;
}
public ProductViewModel GetProductViewModel(int id)
{
return new ProductViewModel
{
Product = _productRepository.GetById(id),
Categories = _categoryRepository.GetAll().ToArray(),
};
}
I change the GET Edit-action to return View(_productsService.GetProductViewModel(id));
and the Edit-view to show a dropdown:
@model Northwind.BLL.ProductViewModel
...
@Html.DropDownListFor(pvm => pvm.Product.CategoryId, Model.Categories
.Select(c => new SelectListItem{Text = c.Name, Value = c.Id.ToString(), Selected = c.Id == Model.Product.CategoryId}))
One small problem with this, and the reason I went astray with Service Locator, is that none of the other action-methods in ProductController need the categories-repository. I feel it's a waste and not logical to create it unless needed. Am I missing something?