By enabling Windsor Container integration, your controllers and filters might request dependencies that can be satisfied by the container, thus leading your design to a loosely coupled architecture.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
    <configSections>
        <section name="monoRail"
                 type="Castle.MonoRail.Engine.Configuration.MonoRailSectionHandler, Castle.MonoRail.Engine" />
        <section name="castle"
                 type="Castle.Windsor.Configuration.AppDomain.CastleSectionHandler, Castle.Windsor" />
    </configSections>

    <monoRail useWindsorIntegration="true">
        <viewEngine
          viewPathRoot="views"
          customEngine="Castle.MonoRail.Framework.Views.NVelocity.NVelocityViewEngine, Castle.MonoRail.Framework.Views.NVelocity" />
    </monoRail>
    <castle>
      <!-- component and facilities configuration goes here -->
    </castle>
</configuration>

Global.asax

You must make your container available to the web application. The best place for it is the global.asax:

~/global.asax

<%@ Application Inherits="YourApp.Web.HttpApplication"  %>

~/src/HttpApplication.cs

namespace YourApp.Web {
    using System;
    using System.Web;

    using Castle.Windsor;
    using Castle.ActiveRecord;

    public class HttpApplication : HttpApplication, IContainerAccessor
    {
        private static WebAppContainer container;

        public void Application_OnStart()
        {
            container = new WebAppContainer();
        }

        public void Application_OnEnd()
        {
            container.Dispose();
        }

        public IWindsorContainer Container
        {
            get { return container; }
        }
    }
}

Container set up

You must register a facility named MonoRailFacility.

It ensures that the lifestyle of each controller is set to Transient - as using the default, singleton, would be a terrible mistake and register each component/controller on the ControllerTree.

Also note that from now on, your controllers (and optionally the filters) are standard components, and need to be registered on the container

~/src/WebAppContainer.cs

{
    using System;

    using YourApp.Web.Controllers;

    using Castle.Model.Resource;
    using Castle.Windsor.Configuration.Interpreters;
    using Castle.MonoRail.WindsorExtension;

    public class WebAppContainer : AppContainer
    {
        public WebAppContainer() : base( new XmlInterpreter( new ConfigResource() ) )
        {
        }

        protected override void RegisterFacilities()
        {
            base.RegisterFacilities();

            AddFacility( "rails", new MonoRailFacility() );
        }

        protected override void RegisterComponents()
        {
            base.RegisterComponents();

            AddComponent( "home.controller", typeof(HomeController) );
        }
    }
}

Benefits

From this point your controllers and filters can use the container auto-wiring capabilities.

A specific configuration for a controller

Suppose you have a controller that receives files uploads. Where should it store the files? Make it configurable!

On the controller

public class ImageGalleryController : Controller
{
  ...

  public ImageGalleryController(String imageDirectory)
  {
    this.imageDirectory = imageDirectory;
  }

  ...
}

Let's assume that this controller was registered on the container with the key imagegallery.controller. On the configuration section:

<castle>
  <components>
    <component id="imagegallery.controller">
      <parameters>
        <imageDirectory>C:\mytempdir\safedir</imageDirectory>
      </parameters>
    </component>
  <components>
</castle>

Your controller could assume a default directory and allow it to be overriden as well

public class ImageGalleryController : Controller
{
  private String imageDirectory = Environment.GetFolderPath( Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData );

  public ImageGalleryController()
  {
  }

  public string ImageDirectory
  {
    get { return imageDirectory; }
    set { imageDirectory = value; }
  }

  ...
}

The previous configuration for the component still valid. But now it's optional as the controller can live without it.

Page Operations

Browse Space

Table of contents

Necessary assemblies on the web project

Web.config

Global.asax

Container set up

Benefits

A specific configuration for a controller