Error using Autofac with ASP.NET Web API RC and ASP.NET MVC3

Question

I added ASP.NET Web API RC to my MVC3 project using NuGet:

Install-Package AspNetWebApi

Then I configured it. In Global.asax.cs:

// configure regular controllers
var configuration = GlobalConfiguration.Configuration;
var container = Bootstrapper.ConfigureContainer(configuration);
containterProvider = new ContainerProvider(container);
DependencyResolver.SetResolver(new AutofacDependencyResolver(container));

// Set the dependency resolver implementation for Web API.
var resolver = new AutofacWebApiDependencyResolver(container);
configuration.DependencyResolver = resolver;

And in Boostrapper.ConfigureContainer(...) I added:

// I register my types as InstancePerLifetimeScope() 
// but I also tried .InstancePerHttpRequest().InstancePerApiRequest()
// to the same end
builder.RegisterType<SomeService>()
    .AsImplementedInterfaces().InstancePerLifetimeScope();
// Register API controllers using assembly scanning.
builder.RegisterApiControllers(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly());
builder.RegisterWebApiFilterProvider(config);

This is described here and here.

I also updated Autofac, Autofac.Web, Autofac.Mvc3 packages using NuGet and installed Autofac.WebApi package.

With this configuration I tried running my ApiController and got the following error:

No scope with a Tag matching 'httpRequest' is visible from the scope in which the instance was requested. This generally indicates that a component registered as per-HTTP request is being reqested by a SingleInstance() component (or a similar scenario.) Under the web integration always request dependencies from the DependencyResolver.Current or ILifetimeScopeProvider.RequestLifetime, never from the container itself.

Then as I read this comment from Alex Meyer-Gleaves:

I suspect you are using the Web API package with MVC3 and this is causing the problem. In the MVC3 integration the tag for the InstancePerHttpRequest lifetime scope was "httpRequest". It was in the MVC4 Beta and Web API Beta packages that I changed both InstancePerHttpRequest and InstancePerApiRequest to use the common tag "AutofacWebRequest". You can grab the MVC4 integration package from NuGet using Autofac.Mvc4.

source article with comment

So following the advice from Alex I got the package Autofac.Mvc4 but it works only with Mvc4 and my project wouldn't build. I then grabbed the source code of Autofac to build Autofac.Mvc4 against Mvc3:

hg clone https://code.google.com/p/autofac/ --branch "MVC4 beta" C:\my\path

After using this assembly as my reference ApiController started working but regular Controllers worked ok only for a single controller action call. When the view called Html.RenderAction(...) and when I refresh or navigate to another controller action it crashes with this error:

No scope with a Tag matching 'AutofacWebRequest' is visible from the scope in which the instance was requested. This generally indicates that a component registered as per-HTTP request is being reqested by a SingleInstance() component (or a similar scenario.) Under the web integration always request dependencies from the DependencyResolver.Current or ILifetimeScopeProvider.RequestLifetime, never from the container itself.

I thought building from the newest source for Autofac.Mvc4 version 2.6.2.859 against Mvc3 could help but I can't find the source for that. Or maybe there's something else wrong in here?

Maksymilian Majer Maksymilian Majer · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-28T12:03:44

I found the problem. I also used Autofac.Integration.Web to inject dependencies into custom Membership and Role providers. But in WebLiftime.cs there was this line:

public static readonly object Request = "httpRequest";

Once I changed it to:

public static readonly object Request = "AutofacWebRequest";

and used the built assembly everything works fine and I get no errors :)

I believe this constant value should the same as in all projects Autofac.Integration.Web, Autofac.Integration.Mvc and 'Autofac.Integration.WebApi for Mvc4 so this supposedly is a bug.

Error using Autofac with ASP.NET Web API RC and ASP.NET MVC3

1 Answers