Question

Is there any way I can inject / build up dependencies on a _ViewStart class without calling my service locator directly?

Thanks
Ben

Answer 1

I don’t understand how you can inject your settings when the _ViewStart class (System.Web.Mvc.ViewStartPage) doesn’t have a property to hold them.

Assuming you’re trying to avoid fetching your settings in _ViewStart, a possible solution would be to create a custom ViewStartPage class that has a property for your settings, and call the service locator from within there:

/* CustomViewStart.cs */
public class CustomViewStart : System.Web.Mvc.ViewStartPage
{
    public ISettings Settings { get; set; }

    public CustomViewStart()
    {
        // Call service locator here
        this.Settings = blah
    }
}

To use this, you need to set the base class in your _ViewStart:

@* _ViewStart.cshtml *@
@inherits MyTestApp.CustomViewStart

There doesn’t seem to be (or certainly I can’t find) a way to set the base class for this in Web.config like you can with basePageType 🙁