Question

I have a Prim class that implements an IPrimitiveDecomposer interface for MEF and inherits Node base class.

public class Node
{
    public Node()
    {
    }
}

public interface IPrimitiveDecomposer
{
    bool Match(Node node);
}

[Export(typeof(IPrimitiveDecomposer))]
public class Prim : Node, IPrimitiveDecomposer
{       
    public bool Match(Node node) {return true;}
}

However, when I inherit a class that doesn’t have a parameterless constructor, MEF’s ComposeParts() method cannot import the Prim object. I added the attribute of ImportingConstructor following this page in MSDN, as I got compilation error without the attribute.

[Export(typeof(IPrimitiveDecomposer))]
public class Prim : Node, IPrimitiveDecomposer
{
    [ImportingConstructor] 
    public Prim(int val) : base (val)
    {}

    public bool Match(Node node) {return true;}
}

The code that doesn’t work is as follows. When you provide the parameterless constructor for the Node class, it works.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel.Composition;
using System.ComponentModel.Composition.Hosting;
using System.Reflection;

public class Node
{
    public Node(int val)
    {
    }
}

public interface IPrimitiveDecomposer
{
    bool Match(Node node);
}

[Export(typeof(IPrimitiveDecomposer))]
public class Prim : Node, IPrimitiveDecomposer
{
    [ImportingConstructor] 
    public Prim(int val) : base (val)
    {}

    public bool Match(Node node) {return true;}
}

public class Test
{
    [ImportMany(typeof(IPrimitiveDecomposer), AllowRecomposition = true)]
    private IEnumerable<IPrimitiveDecomposer> PrimitiveDecomposers { get; set; }

    void mef()
    {
        // MEF
        var catalog = new AggregateCatalog();
        catalog.Catalogs.Add(new AssemblyCatalog(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly()));

        var container = new CompositionContainer(catalog);
        container.ComposeParts(this);
    }

    static void Main()
    {
        var mef = new Test();
        mef.mef();
        var res = mef.PrimitiveDecomposers;

        foreach(var it in res)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(it);
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

The ImportingConstructor attribute only works when the parameters to the constructor are MEF exported objects. The Prim(int val) constructors fails composition because MEF doesn’t know what value to provide for the constructor.

This particular scenario looks like it’s much more suited for a MEF factory pattern.

interface IPrimitiveDecomposerFactory {
  IPrimitiveDecomposer Create(int value);
}

[Export(typeof(IPrimitiveDecomposerFactory))]
sealed class PrimitiveDecomposerFactor : IPrimitiveDecomposerFactory {
  public IPrimitiveDecomposer Create(int value) {
    return new Prim(value);
  }
}

Now code can import the IPrimitiveDecomposerFactory and use it to create IPrimitiveDecomposer instance based on specific int values