Autofac and Autofac.Configuration 4.0.0-beta6 Released
Today we pushed the following packages with support for DNX beta 6:
- Autofac 4.0.0-beta6-110
- Autofac.Framework.DependencyInjection 4.0.0-beta6-110
- Autofac.Configuration 4.0.0-beta6-248
This marks the first release of the Autofac.Configuration package for DNX and includes a lot of changes.
Previous Autofac.Configuration packages relied on web.config or app.config integration to support configuration. With DNX, the new configuration mechanism is through Microsoft.Framework.Configuration and external configuration that isn’t part of web.config or app.config.
While this makes for a cleaner configuration story with a lot of great flexibility, it means if you want to switch to the new Autofac.Configuration, you have some migration to perform.
A nice benefit is you can now use JSON to configure Autofac, which can make things a bit easier to read. A simple configuration file might look like this:
{
"defaultAssembly": "Autofac.Example.Calculator",
"components": [
{
"type": "Autofac.Example.Calculator.Addition.Add, Autofac.Example.Calculator.Addition",
"services": [
{
"type": "Autofac.Example.Calculator.Api.IOperation"
}
],
"injectProperties": true
},
{
"type": "Autofac.Example.Calculator.Division.Divide, Autofac.Example.Calculator.Division",
"services": [
{
"type": "Autofac.Example.Calculator.Api.IOperation"
}
],
"parameters": {
"places": 4
}
}
]
}
If you want, you can still use XML, but it’s not the same as the old XML - you have to make it compatible with Microsoft.Framework.Configuration. Here’s the above JSON config converted to XML:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<autofac defaultAssembly="Autofac.Example.Calculator">
<components name="0">
<type>Autofac.Example.Calculator.Addition.Add, Autofac.Example.Calculator.Addition</type>
<services name="0" type="Autofac.Example.Calculator.Api.IOperation" />
<injectProperties>true</injectProperties>
</components>
<components name="1">
<type>Autofac.Example.Calculator.Division.Divide, Autofac.Example.Calculator.Division</type>
<services name="0" type="Autofac.Example.Calculator.Api.IOperation" />
<injectProperties>true</injectProperties>
<parameters>
<places>4</places>
</parameters>
</components>
</autofac>
When you want to register configuration, you do that by building up your configuration model first and then registering that with Autofac:
// Add the configuration to the ConfigurationBuilder.
var config = new ConfigurationBuilder();
config.AddJsonFile("autofac.json");
// Register the ConfigurationModule with Autofac.
var module = new ConfigurationModule(config.Build());
var builder = new ContainerBuilder();
builder.RegisterModule(module);
Again, check out the documentation for some additional detail including some of the differences and new things we’re supporting using this model.
Finally, big thanks to the Microsoft.Framework.Configuration team for working to get collection/array support into the configuration model.
