Load Unity mappings from an XML File

Question

I would like to be able to load the following into Unity:

UnityContainer.RegisterType<ClientRegistrationVM, ClientRegistrationVMDesign>();

By loading it via an XML File.

Here would be some psudo code of what I would like to have happen.

FileStream unityMappings = new FileStream(@".\UnityMappings.xml", FileMode.Open)
UnityContainer.CreateFromXML(unityMappings);
unityMappings.Dispose();

And the UnityMappings.xml file would contain the mappings and the dlls that the types are in.

Is what I want even possible with Unity? Has anyone done this before?

Answer 1

You can use XML configuration with Unity, you can even mix the design time config (XML) and runtime (code) configuration.

However the Design-Time Configuration uses the UnityConfigurationSection and the config loading is only supported through this so you need to do a little more work if you want to have the config in different (e.g. not app.config or web.config) file.

Luckily you can find a sample in the documentation under: Loading the Configuration from Alternative Files section:

using System.Configuration;

var fileMap = new ExeConfigurationFileMap { ExeConfigFilename = "unity.config" };

Configuration configuration =
    ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration(fileMap,                  
                                                    ConfigurationUserLevel.None);

var unitySection = (UnityConfigurationSection)configuration.GetSection("unity");

var container = new UnityContainer().LoadConfiguration(unitySection);