MVC 2 Beta DefaultControllerFactory with Areas

Question

Why default factory WON'T return full name of the controllers (with namespaces)? I'm using Service Locator and autofac.

using System.Web.Mvc;

using Microsoft.Practices.ServiceLocation;

namespace Application.Core.MVC
{

        public override IController CreateController(System.Web.Routing.RequestContext requestContext, string **controllerName**)
        {
            return ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<IController>(controllerName);
        }
}

I had two home controllers (one under area Blog)

http://localhost/Home

http://localhost/Blog/Home

controllerName return only "Home" without full qualified name for both in above code. This creates a problem when I try to regiser controllers' names for dependency injection. Here is how I register controllers right now according to this situation. Even this brings up the pages without exception. But When I access http://localhost/Home, both controllers invoked regardlessly.

   foreach (var tp in currentAssemblyControllersTypes)
                    builder.Register(tp).FactoryScoped().Named(tp.Name.Replace("Controller", ""));

Anyone can help?Thanks.

Answer 1

The DefaultControllerFactory.CreateController() method is responsible for returning a controller for the given request. The controllerName parameter is just the {controller} part of the route. It's CreateController()'s job - not its caller's - to figure out the proper type given the controller name as specified in the URL.

To make this easier, DefaultControllerFactory.CreateController() delegates into two other methods: GetControllerType() and GetControllerInstance(). If you want to use the original controller resolution logic (e.g. type lookup) but just change how types are instantiated, leave the CreateController() and GetControllerType() methods as-is, and just override GetControllerInstance(). This already takes care of the namespace lookup logic you're duplicating and will make your code far simpler.

Answer 2

[Update according to Levi's answer]

1.Register each controller in full name explicitly:

 foreach (var tp in currentAssemblyControllersTypes)
                builder.Register(tp).FactoryScoped().Named(tp.FullName)

//Application.Controllers.HomeController
//Application.Areas.Blog.Controllers.HomeController

2 .Specify namespace in MapRoute() for Application.Controllers.HomeController in Global.ascx.cs according to PDC09 demo

    routes.MapRoute(
                    "Default",                                              // Route name
                    "{controller}/{action}/{id}",                           // URL with parameters
                    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" }  // Parameter defaults

                    ,new string [] { "Application.Controllers"}  //Specify namespace

      );

        }

3.Override GetControllerInstance() meothod IoCControllerFactory.cs

Protected override IController GetControllerInstance(System.Web.Routing.RequestContext requestContext, System.Type controllerType)
 {
  return (controllerType == null)? base.GetControllerInstance(requestContext,controllerType):ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<IController>(controllerType.FullName);
 }