Hi everyone! I'm a .Net developer and I've been trying to get my head around StructureMap and IoC containers in general recently. I understand what dependency injection is, and I know how to use interfaces to make code more testable and extensible.
What exactly is an IoC container though? I welcome answers from anyone, not just other .Net developers 😁
Top comments (8)
If you don't use IoC container, how do you instantiate objects? Somewhere in the area that starts the application, you would define how to set up the object right?
For example you have IAddProduct. You pass it to the ProductController as constructor argument. The AddProduct concrete class needs IGetUOM. So to create IAddProduct maybe somewhere in your code you have generateIAddProduct that instantiate GetUOM, then instantiate AddProduct, then return it.
IoC container makes this object generation simpler. You tell it if someone ask for IAddProduct, give them AddProduct. You tell it about IGetUOM too, and the other classes and interfaces. Later when something asks the IoC container to generate IAddProduct, it will automatically inspect that AddProduct needs IGetUOM, generates GetUOM, use it to create AddProduct, and then give the complete item to the asker.
If you are interested to learn more about dependency injection, there is a book called Dependency Injection. It's really good!
Thank you so much for your clear and accessible explanation! It's not easy explaining these things I know but thank you for having empathy for me in your response 😄
I have recently tried to explain IoC to my co-workers, and I discribe it as the magical thing that make dependency injection work, without us doing anything but focusing on writing new features. It's automagical.
Before I knew about IoC, I wrote my own new statements and building the dependency tree manually. Sometimes, that tree got huge and if I needed to change some dependency, all my trees had to be updated. IoC takes care of all that stuff at runtime.
Still seeking more responses because nobody has yet explained this like I'm five!
Which just proves that five-year-olds are not necessarily equipped to understand everything yet. :-)
You've completely missed the point soz!
Have I? What I am saying in a way is that some concepts cannot be explained in a few words using very simple terms because they require a complex and intricate background to start with. I think IoC/DI is such a concept.
No idea what you're talking about mate 😕