current community

your communities

more stack exchange communities

company blog
Stack Exchange Inbox Reputation and Badges
tour help
Join the Stack Overflow Community
Stack Overflow is a community of 6.6 million programmers, just like you, helping each other.
Join them; it only takes a minute:
Sign up
up vote 302 down vote favorite
151

Which C#/.NET Dependency Injection frameworks are worth looking into? And what can you say about their complexity and speed.

share|improve this question

closed as not constructive by Bill the Lizard Dec 20 '12 at 18:54

As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
12  
IoC Container Benchmark - Performance comparison has performance and features comparison tables for 20+ products and keep them up-to-date. It recommends Simple Injector – Michael Freidgeim Mar 22 '13 at 22:07
    
I appreciate Ninject & Maestro. I'm happy that the top rated answer reffer Ninject as "an absolute pleasure" – Razvan Dumitru Jun 26 '14 at 0:28
    
I'd stress that before you look into IoC containers, you should manage without one. Do your wiring and injection manually, it's not really complicated or requiring of a lot of code at all unless you have some really complex or large systems. When you feel that you understand it and that it is becoming combersome you will be better fited to understand what kind of framework wuold help you. but there is no rule that says that a project MUST have an IoC container just to be able to do DI properly. – kai May 3 '16 at 6:28

13 Answers 13

up vote 278 down vote accepted

I suppose I might be being a bit picky here but it's important to note that DI (Dependency Injection) is a programming pattern and is facilitated by, but does not require, an IoC (Inversion of Control) framework. IoC frameworks just make DI much easier and they provide a host of other benefits over and above DI.

That being said, I'm sure that's what you were asking. About IoC Frameworks; I used to use Spring.Net and CastleWindsor a lot, but the real pain in the behind was all that pesky XML config you had to write! They're pretty much all moving this way now, so I have been using StructureMap for the last year or so, and since it has moved to a fluent config using strongly typed generics and a registry, my pain barrier in using IoC has dropped to below zero! I get an absolute kick out of knowing now that my IoC config is checked at compile-time (for the most part) and I have had nothing but joy with StructureMap and its speed. I won't say that the others were slow at runtime, but they were more difficult for me to setup and frustration often won the day.

Update

I've been using Ninject on my latest project and it has been an absolute pleasure to use. Words fail me a bit here, but (as we say in the UK) this framework is 'the Dogs'. I would highly recommend it for any green fields projects where you want to be up and running quickly. I got all I needed from a fantastic set of Ninject screencasts by Justin Etheredge. I can't see that retro-fitting Ninject into existing code being a problem at all, but then the same could be said of StructureMap in my experience. It'll be a tough choice going forward between those two, but I'd rather have competition than stagnation and there's a decent amount of healthy competition out there.

Other IoC screencasts can also be found here on Dimecasts.

share|improve this answer
    
It's great to see a quality, well thought out answer rise about the one liners. You convinced me to check out StructureMap. – Chris Marasti-Georg Oct 30 '08 at 15:13
2  
Excellent answer with good references, I like it! – Dave Van den Eynde Feb 2 '09 at 15:04
51  
The dog's what? ;) – Benjol Mar 5 '09 at 13:01
6  
Nice but to be fair - Windsor has a very nice fully-fledged fluent interface now as well. – Krzysztof Kozmic Dec 1 '09 at 15:01
6  
If performance is a factor, this post provides a regularly updated benchmark for most of them: palmmedia.de/blog/2011/8/30/… – Yosoyadri Mar 17 '13 at 13:56
up vote 66 down vote

It depends on what you are looking for, as they each have their pros and cons.

  1. Spring.NET is the most mature as it comes out of Spring from the Java world. Spring has a very rich set of framework libraries that extend it to support Web, Windows, etc.
  2. Castle Windsor is one of the most widely used in the .NET platform and has the largest ecosystem, is highly configurable / extensible, has custom lifetime management, AOP support, has inherent NHibernate support and is an all around awesome container. Windsor is part of an entire stack which includes Monorail, Active Record, etc. NHibernate itself builds on top of Windsor.
  3. Structure Map has very rich and fine grained configuration through an internal DSL.
  4. Autofac is an IoC container of the new age with all of it's inherent functional programming support. It also takes a different approach on managing lifetime than the others. Autofac is still very new, but it pushes the bar on what is possible with IoC.
  5. Ninject I have heard is more bare bones with a less is more approach (heard not experienced).
  6. The biggest discriminator of Unity is: it's from and supported by Microsoft (p&p). Unity has very good performance, and great documentation. It is also highly configurable. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of say Castle / Structure Map.

So in summary, it really depends on what is important to you. I would agree with others on going and evaluating and seeing which one fits. The nice thing is you have a nice selection of donuts rather than just having to have a jelly one.

share|improve this answer
2  
Good description. I would stay away from Unity though as it's simply a PITA to use. – Krzysztof Kozmic Dec 1 '09 at 15:03
3  
Autofac is actually not so new, it is older than Unity :) – Nicholas Blumhardt Jan 7 '10 at 3:13
2  
@Krzysztof - I find Unity dead easy (at least when configured fluently in code). What did you find painful? – TrueWill Jan 19 '11 at 23:24
1  
@Krzysztof - Using the UnityContainer Fluent Interface – TrueWill Jun 18 '11 at 17:45
6  
Here's an interesting performance benchmark: palmmedia.de/Blog/2011/8/30/… – Steven Dec 13 '11 at 10:51
up vote 31 down vote

Autofac. http://code.google.com/p/autofac/ It is really fast and pretty good. Here is a link with comparisons (made after Ninject fixed a memory leak issue).

http://www.codinginstinct.com/2008/05/ioc-container-benchmark-rerevisted.html

share|improve this answer
3  
Autofac is the first DI container I've really tried out, and thus far it's been brilliant. Simple, quick, and powerful – Orion Edwards Feb 2 '09 at 22:41
    
Is it faster than the others? Or was that a general comment? – Blankman Sep 13 '11 at 0:57
    
I do like autofac but it's certainly not fast. As Steven linked above: palmmedia.de/Blog/2011/8/30/… – Serj Sagan Aug 10 '16 at 21:11
up vote 17 down vote

Ninject is great. It seems really fast, but I haven't done any comparisons. I know Nate, the author, did some comparisons between Ninject and other DI frameworks and is looking for more ways to improve the speed of Ninject.

I've heard lots of people I respect say good things about StructureMap and CastleWindsor. Those, in my mind, are the big three to look at right now.

share|improve this answer
1  
Ninject is popular but it is certainly NOT fast. It is actually one of the slowest out there: palmmedia.de/Blog/2011/8/30/… – Serj Sagan Aug 10 '16 at 21:11
up vote 12 down vote

I use Simple Injector:

Simple Injector is an easy, flexible and fast dependency injection library that uses best practice to guide your solutions toward the pit of success.

share|improve this answer
2  
Beware some consider the service locator an anti-pattern, including someone who used it for some time and even wrote a library for it: blog.ploeh.dk/2010/02/03/ServiceLocatorisanAnti-Pattern – Philippe Sep 10 '13 at 19:37
    
Steven is also the creator of Simple Injector... so this is kind of a spammy answer... especially that he used an alt accounts to do so... Simple Injector is pretty fast though: palmmedia.de/Blog/2011/8/30/… – Serj Sagan Aug 10 '16 at 21:13
up vote 8 down vote

I'm a huge fan of Castle. I love the facilities it also provides beyond the IoC Container story. It really simplfies using NHibernate, logging, AOP, etc. I also use Binsor for configuration with Boo and have really fallen in love with Boo as a language because of it.

share|improve this answer
up vote 4 down vote

I've used Spring.NET in the past and had great success with it. I never noticed any substantial overhead with it, though the project we used it on was fairly heavy on its own. It only took a little time reading through the documentation to get it set up.

share|improve this answer
up vote 3 down vote

I can recommend Ninject. It's incredibly fast and easy to use but only if you don't need XML configuration, else you should use Windsor.

share|improve this answer
    
It is NOT fast! It is one of the slowest DI frameworks out there! palmmedia.de/Blog/2011/8/30/… – Serj Sagan Aug 10 '16 at 21:15
up vote 3 down vote

I spent the better part of a day struggling without success to get the simplest Spring.NET example working. Could never figure out how to get it to find my assembly from the XML file. In about 2 hours, on the other hand, I was able to get Ninject working, including testing integration with both NUnit and MSTest.

share|improve this answer
up vote 2 down vote

The great thing about C# is that it is following a path beaten by years of Java developers before it. So, my advice, generally speaking when looking for tools of this nature, is to look for the solid Java answer and see if there exists a .NET adaptation yet.

So when it comes to DI (and there are so many options out there, this really is a matter of taste) is Spring.NET. Additionally, it's always wise to research the people behind projects. I have no issue suggesting SourceGear products for source control (outside of using them) because I have respect for Eric Sink. I have seen Mark Pollack speak and what can I say, the guy just gets it.

In the end, there are a lot of DI frameworks and your best bet is to do some sample projects with a few of them and make an educated choice.

Good luck!

share|improve this answer
up vote 2 down vote

I think a good place to start is with Ninject, it is new and has taken into account alot of fine tuning and is really fast. Nate, the developer, really has a great site and great support.

share|improve this answer
    
Why are you saying it is fast??? It is one of the slowest that there is! palmmedia.de/Blog/2011/8/30/… – Serj Sagan Aug 10 '16 at 21:16
up vote 2 down vote

Spring.Net is quite solid, but the documentation took some time to wade through. Autofac is good, and while .Net 2.0 is supported, you need VS 2008 to compile it, or else use the command line to build your app.

share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

We use Unity from the Microsoft Enterprise Library

share|improve this answer
1  
Downvoted - it's purely a statement - but with no reasoning on: A) Why you use it. B) Why other's should use it. C) Why anyone should use it over anything else. – Stuart.Sklinar Nov 4 '15 at 9:05

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.