Complexities

Posted on by mookid8000 Leave a comment

Recently, I had the opportunity to teach an introductory course in programming in C#, including topics on dependency injection, IoC containers, and test-driven development.

When I introduced the concept of dependency injection, and I suggested that this seemingly pretty simple and trivial task be accomplished by putting an IoC container to use, some of the attendees reacted with scepticism and doubt – would this thing, configured with either endless fluent spells or – shudder! – tonnes of XML, not make everything even more complex?

At the time, I tried to convince them that an IoC container was cool, and that learning its ins and outs could be considered some kind of investment that – over time – would actually reduce complexity. This is not something new, and everybody who has ever used an IoC container will probably agree with me that this investment pays off. But still, I think I needed some words that would support my argument better.

So, here goes a few random thought about complexity…

Complexity?

Right now, I want to focus on the kind of complexity that is inherent in non-trivial programs. That is, the complexity can not be removed from the program. The complexity can be anything, really, and it is there in some form or another, and we need to deal with it.

Immediate vs. deferred complexity

Assuming we need to deal with it, how do we do it then? Which strategy do we follow? Well, acknowledging its existence is not the same as dealing with it, but it’s definitely a first step. Thereafter, we should probably consider either A) solving the complexity on a case-to-case ad hoc kind of basis, or B) building some kind of mechanism, that abstracts the identified complexity away, thus dealing with the complexity right now.

Localized vs. dispersed complexity

Definitely coupled to the above somehow, but not inseparable, is the localized vs. dispersed complexity question: When you identify some kind of complexity, do you A) solve the problem in all the little places where the complexity surfaces, or B) build some kind of framework that makes all the other code oblivious of the complexity?

My opinion, and how it relates to IoC containers

I don’t know about you, but I prefer B & B: the abstraction and the framework. It might leak, and it might take some time for other developers to grok if they have never seen that particular problem solved like that before, but if the abstraction holds, it will probably assume some kind of pattern status that will be used, re-used, and recognized from then on.

The force of IoC containers is that they take control over object creation, thus providing hooks around whenever objects are created, and object creation is an incredibly important event in a running program. Having a hook in that proves to be infinitely useful (almost).

The IoC container solves the complexity of deciding when and how to create (which) objects. This would otherwise be a severely dispersed (spatially as well as temporally) complexity, or cross-cutting concern if you will, in that it is a really common thing to instantiate stuff and/or use existing instances of stuff, and the alternative would be to new up objects, maybe pulling from a cache somewhere, all around the place – thus infiltrating our program with our solution to that particular problem.

Conclusion

Use an IoC container. Learn to use its features. Allow the container to take responsibility. This will make you happy.

(seriously, do it! :))

IoC component registration

Posted on by mookid8000 4 Comments

An interesting topic, that I always love to discuss, is how to find a balance between building a pure domain model and being pragmatic and getting the job done. It just so happens, that getting the job done, and being able to add features to a system quickly, usually conflicts with my inner purist, who really wishes to keep my domain model and services oblivious of everything infrastructure-related.

Usually, I go for pragmatism. Not only because I’m lazy, but also because I think it’s funny to come up with solutions that accelerate development, and generally make the sun shine brighter.

Actually, this post should have been #2 in a series called “Polluting My Domain”, and this post should have been #1, because in #1 I showed how I usually use attributes to give hints to the automapper in Fluent NHibernate – e.g. [Cascade] on a relation to configure NHibernate to cascade operations across that relation, or [Indexed("ix__something")] to make that column be indexed in the database, or [Encrypted] to make that particular property be backed by an encrypting IUserType.

This post, however, will show a pragmatic, elegant and flexible way to make component registration easy in an IoC container.

Most IoC containers that I know of can be configured with XML and through some kind of more or less fluent API in code. I’ll spare you the XML, so I’ll just show a small example on Castle Windsor’s fluent API:

or you can perform multiple registrations like this:

This is all fine and dandy, but I think the fluent API becomes pretty complicated when you throw customized registrations per customer and/or environment into the mix – mostly because it will become kind of obscure which services get registered where.

Therefore, one of the first things I have put in my recent projects, have been a registration routine based on attributes. Pretty simple, and yes, it does pollute my domain services with infrastructure-related stuff, but this is a great example where I prefer pragmatism and simplicity over purity.

My most recent project has two attributes, ServiceAttribute and RegisterInAttribute that look something like this:

and then the registration code looks like this:

So, having established the current value of environment, my component registration will look like this:

– and that’s it! But the best of it is that adding services to the system now becomes a breeze – check this out – registering a concrete type, offering itself as a service:

– and here’s registering different stuff depending on the environment:

This way of registering component has proven to me several times to be a simple and nifty way of managing the differences between environments, and even differences between customers (which would require a few extensions to the example above though), still being able to add services to the system quickly.

Another benefit is that it’s pretty clear what happens, even to developers who might not be that experienced in using IoC containers. If I were the only developer on a project, I would probably prefer component registration based on conventions, but when you have a team, you sometimes need to make some things more explicit.