Service Fabric

The Autofac.ServiceFabric package enables integration of Autofac with Service Fabric services.

Quick Start

In your Main program method, build up your container and register services using the Autofac extensions. This will attach service registrations from the container and the ServiceRuntime. Dispose of the container at app shutdown.

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Threading;
using Autofac;
using Autofac.Integration.ServiceFabric;

namespace DemoService
{
  public static class Program
  {
      private static void Main()
      {
        try
        {
          // The ServiceManifest.xml file defines one or more service type names.
          // Registering a service maps a service type name to a .NET type.
          // When Service Fabric creates an instance of this service type,
          // an instance of the class is created in this host process.

          // Start with the trusty old container builder.
          var builder = new ContainerBuilder();

          // Register any regular dependencies.
          builder.RegisterModule(new LoggerModule(ServiceEventSource.Current.Message));

          // Register the Autofac magic for Service Fabric support.
          builder.RegisterServiceFabricSupport();

          // Register a stateless service...
          builder.RegisterStatelessService<DemoStatelessService>("DemoStatelessServiceType");

          // ...and/or register a stateful service.
          // builder.RegisterStatefulService<DemoStatefulService>("DemoStatefulServiceType");

          using (builder.Build())
          {
            ServiceEventSource.Current.ServiceTypeRegistered(
              Process.GetCurrentProcess().Id,
              typeof(DemoStatelessService).Name);

            // Prevents this host process from terminating so services keep running.
            Thread.Sleep(Timeout.Infinite);
          }
      }
      catch (Exception e)
      {
        ServiceEventSource.Current.ServiceHostInitializationFailed(e.ToString());
        throw;
      }
    }
  }
}

Per-Request Scopes

It is possible to achieve a “per request” style scoping mechanism by making use of the implicit relationships supported by Autofac.

For example, if you have a stateless service, its lifetime is effectively a singleton. You would want to use the Func<T> or Func<Owned<T>> relationships (for non-disposable vs. disposable components, respectively) to inject an auto-generated factory into your service. Your service could then resolve dependencies as needed.

For example, say you have a user service that is stateless and it needs to read from some backing store that shouldn’t be a singleton. Assuming the backing store is IDisposable you’d want to use Func<Owned<T>> and inject it like this:

public class UserService: IUserService
{
  private readonly Func<Owned<IUserStore>> _userStoreFactory;

  public UserService(Func<Owned<IUserStore>> userStoreFactory)
  {
    _userStoreFactory = userStoreFactory;
  }

  public async Task<string> GetNameAsync(int id)
  {
    using (var userStore = _userStoreFactory())
    {
      return await userStore.Value.GetNameAsync(id);
    }
  }
}

While there’s no “built in” semantics around per-request handling specifically, you can do a lot with the implicit relationships so it’s worth becoming familiar with them.

Example

There is an example project showing Service Fabric integration in the Autofac examples repository.