Structure and order your DI container

20/12/2022
DIC#.NET

Does your Dependency Injection container is one big pile of method calls one after the other? Are there 50 lines of just AddScoped, AddTransient, and so on? Well, let's fix this.

We can utilize extension methods to make an order to that mess!

The problem

When your project grows, so does your dependency injection container. You might have over 100 lines of code just with registrations and configurations. So after a while, a typical DI container can look like the following example.

builder.Services.AddSingleton(_ => AppConfigurationFactory.Create(builder.Configuration));
builder.Services.AddScoped<IServiceA, ServiceA>();
builder.Services.AddScoped<IServiceB, ServiceB>();
// 50 more lines like that
builder.Services.AddScoped<IServiceZ, ServiceZ>();
builder.Services.AddDbContext<MyDbContext>();
builder.Services.AddScoped<IRepository, Repository>();

That isn't really great. If I would add another thing to the container, where should I put this? Should make that mess even worse? The first option one could consider is private methods. That would help, but it has a fundamental downside to the approach. The downside is that still all of your registrations are in one big method. But in a nice world, they are located where they belong and fit from a conceptual point of view. And here is where extension methods can come into play. The idea is to create new public static classes that are located close to the code that gets registered in the container and only hold those types that are necessary. The overall DI container then just is a bunch of those extension method calls that have a very descriptive naming. So if someone is interested (s)he can go into said method to see what is going on. Also, it is very clear where you would have to add another registration as everything is kind of modular.

builder.AddConfiguration(builder);
builder.AddDomainUseCaseA();
builder.AddDomainUseCaseB();
builder.AddPersistence();

public static class ConfigurationExtensions
{
    public static void AddConfiguration(this IServiceCollection services, WebApplication builder)
    {
        services.AddSingleton(_ => AppConfigurationFactory.Create(builder.Configuration));
    }
}

public static class DomainServiceAExtensions
{
    public static void AddDomainUseCaseA(this IServiceCollection services, WebApplication builder)
    {
        services.AddScoped<IServiceA, ServiceA>();
        services.AddScoped<IServiceB, ServiceB>();
    }
}

public static class DomainServiceBExtensions
{
    public static void AddDomainUseCaseB(this IServiceCollection services, WebApplication builder)
    {
        services.AddScoped<IServiceG, ServiceG>();
        services.AddScoped<IServiceH, ServiceH>();
    }
}

public static class PeristenceExtensions
{
    public static void AddPersistence(this IServiceCollection services)
    {
        services.AddDbContext<MyDbContext>();
        services.AddScoped<IRepository, Repository>();
    }
}

As you can see way more structured. We directly see what is going on and if we want to know what is in the DomainUseCaseA package, we can just go into that extension method. And of course, all of those public static classes can be located wherever they want to be.

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