Which C#/.NET Dependency Injection frameworks are worth looking into? And what can you say about their complexity and speed.
Constructor Injection in C# Construction injection is the most commonly used dependency pattern in Object Oriented Programming.
You can waste days evaluating IOC containers. The top ones are quite similar. There is not much in this, but the best ones are StructureMap and AutoFac.
NET supports the dependency injection (DI) software design pattern, which is a technique for achieving Inversion of Control (IoC) between classes and their dependencies. Dependency injection in . NET is a built-in part of the framework, along with configuration, logging, and the options pattern.
Spring.NET is one of the popular open source frameworks for Dependency Injection. Spring.NET supports . NET 4.0, . NET Client Profile 3.5 and 4.0, Silverlight 4.0 and 5.0, and Windows Phone 7.0 and 7.1.
edit (not by the author): There is a comprehensive list of IoC frameworks available at https://github.com/quozd/awesome-dotnet/blob/master/README.md#ioc:
Original answer follows.
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.
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