Question

I have a custom ViewEngine that I am using with my MVC4 web app.

I register is currently in the Global.asax like this:

ViewEngines.Engines.Clear();
ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new CustomViewEngine());

In my CustomViewEngine class I have properties of classes that are available through my IOC implementation (using CastleWindsor)

At the moment I could access the windsor resolver directly in the CustomViewEngine and resolve them, but what I would really like to do is have the ViewEngine resolved by windsor and get all those bits for free. Without having to do it explicitly.

Is this even possible? I would want the ViewEngine then to be resolved per WebRequest.

Answer 1

How about something like this?

    public class DependencyViewEngine : RazorViewEngine
    {
        public override ViewEngineResult FindPartialView(ControllerContext controllerContext, string partialViewName, bool useCache)
        {
            var result = base.FindPartialView(controllerContext, partialViewName, useCache);
            result.ViewEngine = // resolve view engine
            return result;
        }

        public override ViewEngineResult FindView(ControllerContext controllerContext, string viewName, string masterName, bool useCache)
        {
            var result = base.FindView(controllerContext, viewName, masterName, useCache);
            result.ViewEngine = // resolve view engine
            return result;
        }

    }

Then

    ViewEngines.Engines.Clear();
    ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new DependencyViewEngine());

EDIT:

How about implementing the dependency resolver to use your container?

public class CustomDependencyResolver : IDependencyResolver
{
    public CustomDependencyResolver(IContainer container)
    {
       // ...
    }

    public object GetService(Type serviceType)
    {
        // pass resolution off to your container
    }
    public IEnumerable<object> GetServices(Type serviceType)
    {
        // pass resolution off to your container
    }
}

Then

protected void Application_Start()
{
   ViewEngines.Engines.Clear();
   var resolver = new CustomDependencyResolver(container);
   DependencyResolver.SetResolver(resolver);
}