dependency-injection

Dependency Injection

Core Principles

1. Constructor injection is the default — Inject dependencies through the constructor (primary constructors make this clean). No service locator, no property injection.
2. Match lifetimes carefully — A singleton must never depend on a scoped or transient service. This is the most common DI bug.
3. Register interfaces, resolve interfaces — Register services.AddScoped<IOrderService, OrderService>(), not the concrete type.
4. Keyed services for strategy pattern — .NET 8+ keyed services replace manual factory patterns for selecting between implementations.

Patterns

Keyed Services (.NET 8+)

Use keyed services to register and resolve multiple implementations of the same interface.

// Registration
builder.Services.AddKeyedScoped<INotificationService, EmailNotificationService>("email");
builder.Services.AddKeyedScoped<INotificationService, SmsNotificationService>("sms");
builder.Services.AddKeyedScoped<INotificationService, PushNotificationService>("push");

// Resolution via attribute
public class OrderHandler([FromKeyedServices("email")] INotificationService notifier)
{
    public async Task Handle(CreateOrder.Command command, CancellationToken ct)
    {
        // ... create order
        await notifier.SendAsync(notification, ct);
    }
}

// Resolution via IServiceProvider
public class NotificationRouter(IServiceProvider provider)
{
    public INotificationService GetService(string channel)
    {
        return provider.GetRequiredKeyedService<INotificationService>(channel);
    }
}

Decorator Pattern

// Base service
public interface IOrderService
{
    Task<Result<Order>> CreateAsync(CreateOrderRequest request, CancellationToken ct);
}

public class OrderService(AppDbContext db, TimeProvider clock) : IOrderService
{
    public async Task<Result<Order>> CreateAsync(CreateOrderRequest request, CancellationToken ct)
    {
        var order = Order.Create(request, clock.GetUtcNow());
        db.Orders.Add(order);
        await db.SaveChangesAsync(ct);
        return Result.Success(order);
    }
}

// Decorator — adds logging
public class LoggingOrderService(IOrderService inner, ILogger<LoggingOrderService> logger) : IOrderService
{
    public async Task<Result<Order>> CreateAsync(CreateOrderRequest request, CancellationToken ct)
    {
        logger.LogInformation("Creating order for customer {CustomerId}", request.CustomerId);
        var result = await inner.CreateAsync(request, ct);
        if (result.IsSuccess)
            logger.LogInformation("Order {OrderId} created", result.Value.Id);
        return result;
    }
}

// Registration with Scrutor
builder.Services.AddScoped<IOrderService, OrderService>();
builder.Services.Decorate<IOrderService, LoggingOrderService>();