Dec 07, 2009 as the services are discovered they will be registered in the ioc container unity. I am just quoting some lines from msdn, the managed extensibility framework or. I am just quoting some lines from msdn, the managed extensibility framework or mef is a library for. Sep, 2011 this article presents creating prism using mef object rather than unity. If youre building windows presentation foundation applications that will change over time or have some combination of complex workflows, rich user interaction, and significant presentation or business logic, microsoft recommends that you add prism and unity to your toolkit. One of the most highly anticipated of the new technologies coming in. Mef and unity or any other ioc container this one goes. Prism is extensible, thereby allowing other containers to be used instead with a little bit of work. Unity is an ioc container and is intended to be used for di. Conversion to prism i converted the universal app to. Binding while both tools allow you to register multiple objects with a container and retrieve a matching object, the way that you retrieve the objects differs between the two frameworks. Based on my understanding, unity container supports all the layers you mentioned of asp. But once you start adding xaml files, all bets are off.
Mef and prism exploration, mef module loading glenn block. Introduction to prism with mef for wpfpart i chriz yuen. May 05, 2014 to install the prism assets, rightclick the prismv5. Prism somehow natively supports unity and mef containers. I sincerely think the radpanegroup needs to take the responsibility to make the radpane on top when the prism call regionmanager. It includes an ioc container unity that it uses for its injection. The codeplex site also offers additional material in the form of blogs, knowledge base, and. Mvvm pattern, navigation, and the managed extensibility framework mef. Im trying to find good patterns and resources for doing this very thing. Making prism mef friendly in the first part of this series, we explored using the unity container to bind the view model to the view. Mef requires export attribute to be specified on the class. Mef resolves instances of application types that are exposed through mef export attributes. Programming prism, mvvm, and mef inhouse at your company, on your schedule, customized to your needs call 978 356 6377 for information what exactly is prism and where do i get it. Windows is the core library for the uwp technology and prism.
Creating a modular application using prism v2 screencast. I can also specify that mef is to search for classes in a specified class library or among the dlls in a specific folder. Mef and unity or any other ioc container posted on december 7, 2009 february 11, 2010 by phill. A properly pleasing primer tutorial for wpf prism part 3. Aug 11, 2009 displaying user messages, errors and dialogs from a viewmodel using a service part 2. So i cannot find the correct view and make it on top. Dec 30, 2009 in the first part of this series, we explored using the unity container to bind the view model to the view.
Sep 21, 2015 a different approach for di with unity is explored which employs mef managed extensibility framework for detecting the registration of self declaring types. For instance, with mef, i can write code to load individual classes into a container. Microsoft visual studio 2010most recommended, my example build by this. Currently prism works with both mef and unity, but many quick starts and other tutorials were written some time ago and concentrate on unity rather than on mef. Prism is intended for software developers building wpf or silverlight applications that. What is different between and purpose of mef and unity. This process is identical to what we did with the shell project. Jun 05, 2011 prism is a framework introduced by patterns and practices team which is available from here. Mef is not an ioc container even though you can make it function as one, however poorly. Introduction to prism with mef for wpfpart i preface. If you registered this class to the container, you will get it by your demand. To install the prism assets, rightclick the prismv5. Perhaps you should give prism a look as it may contain other components which you may want to leverage downstream.
However, crack open this package and you will find it kind of empty. Dec 03, 2010 prism is a collection of library source code that can be modified or extended if needed, signed binaries, extensions to the unity application block and managed extensibility framework mef, reference implementations, quick starts, and documentation. You can think of this as the two worlds in harmony solution. The nuget team does not provide support for this client. It should be pointed out that the differences between mef and unity are because the libraries serve different purposes. This means you can instantiate any other third party type. There are many other silverlight based tutorials, but there is a slight edge on the wpf side. First of all i bag your pardon for my poor english. About a month ago i posted some ideas around mef and prism together. Prism provides a batch file to register the prism library signed binaries with visual studio. In this article, we will try to understand how we can achieve dependency injection without any framework and using mef and unity framework. If you find the solution mysteriously failing to find libraries that it should, open your. Prism is a collection of library source code that can be modified or extended if needed, signed binaries, extensions to the unity application block and managed extensibility framework mef, reference implementations, quick starts, and documentation.
A newer contender, the managed extensibility framework mef, has also grown in popularity. Creating modularity with wpf, prism and unity visual. You can find the other posts in the series here how to use unity in a web application, here adding interfaces, here registration by convention, here injecting values, here extensions, here aspectoriented programming, here dependency injection and the. Download visual basic prism 4 reference implementations. In the first part of this series, we explored using the unity container to bind the view model to the view. Adding mef style registration attributes to unity measure. Unity framework is definitely one of the very popular di framework. Prism is a framework introduced by patterns and practices team which is available from here.
Honestly, i wish the first version of prism never shipped with official mef support. Both unity and mef provide the same basic functionality for dependency injection, even though they work very differently. Creating a modular application using prism v2 screencast 44. Prism is basically guidance for designing composite applications where you have a shell and regions that are dynamically assigned, and integrated. Aug 16, 2009 piotr has put together a unity integration layer that takes advantage of extension points in both unity and mef to create a bridge between the two. Prism library, you may use the unity extensions for the prism library and the unity application block unity or the managed extensibility framework mef. When eli was writing a wpf mvvm tutorial, he decided to use.
The sample was one of the original samples written my the microsoft patterns and practices team back in the early days. In the past ive made some screencast videos around prism or composite application guidance for silverlight ive also made some screencast videos around the managed extensibility framework in silverlight not so long ago, the prism folks announced that they would be integrating mef into prism with the forthcoming v4 and so i thought it would be. Still trying to work in avalondock with mvvm in the modules. I am really keen to give customers of my applications the ability to extend my pages by allowing them to inject their own parts into my page from a ui and an event handling perspective. Folks that are familiar with prism and that have been looking at mef have been wondering how prism and mef relate to each other. You can build a viewswitching, modular prism application using mef, or any di container such as unity. Prism provides several useful mechanisms that relate directly to views and modules, such as the region manager and the module manager. Shared instances really appealed to me and was something i wanted to borrow from mef. To do that, start visual studio and create wpf application. Net reflector using its public interface, mimicking the original. This will extract the source code and reference api documentation into the folder of your choice. Changing from one to another can be quite painful and you may want to consider building another prism project from the ground up using mef or even.
However, the decoration of classes with the exportattribute and partcreationpolicyattribute for singletons vs. Prism provides a shortcut file to each of the code assets. Prism has references to specific versions of various containers, and if you upgrade that container to a version that prism does not reference, you will break binary. Displaying user messages, errors and dialogs from a viewmodel using a service part 1 in my previous post, ive discussed a bit about using the mvvm pattern and how to display a message or opening a dialog from within the viewmodel. The only thing i would have liked was more mefed versions since you covered mostly unity, but it still helped a lot and the mef examples were quite nice. Dynamic mef modules in prism in the final part of this series, i will show a dynamically loaded module using prism that takes full advantage of mef.
Containers out of the box, mef offers more ways to set up containers than unity does. So basically mef is used to discover services to be started up this is the extensible part and services as dependencies to other services this is the discoverable part to be registered in the container. It too has a module component as well as other application blocks you can leverage. Ive read some answers in posts about prism in stackoverflow and these answers are asserting that unity is more preferable than mef in viewswitching prism application development if a developer himself develop all modules and doesnt use thirdparty modules. With mef you define one or more properties on a class and specify that those properties are to accept objects selected by mef. Both mef and ioc seem to address decoupling of an application but from different perspectives.
Right click on the navigationmenu project and select manage nuget packages click on the browse tab and type prism. In my current project, i plan to leverage the prism framework and ultimately decided to go with unity over mef for my dependency injection container. Managed extensibility framework mef you can have a read about unity from this msdn link. Unity glue prism, also known as composite wpf, has established itself as a very popular framework for building modular, scalable silverlight applications. Prism mef creating and using a new regionmanager i dont have the code currently available, so ill try to be as descriptive as possible. Recommendation read simple controller dependency injection in asp.
Registering with visual studio is not required, but for many developers, doing so simplifies referencing the prism library assets in their own projects. The next logical step is to explore how to use mef. This version of the prism takes approximately 2 hours to administer once interviewers have become familiar with the interview. I currently use unity within prism and have enjoyed it thus far. Unity creates new instance of type by default mef creates singleton instance of type by default unity does not require registration for classes. This will be the first of a series of posts mostly about mef and how it integrates with a proper ioc container, unity in our examples, to bring extensibility to an mvc application written in asp. Prism is designed to work with unity or mef, or with any other dependency injection. Although i used to work with unity for quite a time now, for reasons discussed in a separate article i wanted to try castle windsor container. Mef cannot create instance of third party type unless it defines export.
Mef is a dependency injection framework its main goal is to fill in depedencies at runtime for an application. Wpf nuget package, it will bring in all the dependencies like prism. This course provides an introduction to the prism 4. This article describes differences between mef and unity which. With unity, my container is set up in one or a few places, so if i need to see what goes with what, its easy just to go there. Mef mechanism works with attributes so it is less intuitive way, and again need a control on every class you need to use. Can anyone tell me whether there is an equivalent platform technology for mvc like there is prism and mef for silverlight 4. In this model, mefs container is hidden behind the scenes but handles providing mef components. What i really dislike about mef is how it separates the exports from the imports using attributes scattered throughout your code, making it increasingly difficult to understand as the code grows. Next we add the prism and unity libraries to our module. A newer contender, the managed extensibility framework mef, has. If you are using the unitybootstrapper class, it is now derived. Mef and unity or any other ioc container this one goes to 11.
Eli explains what he did, and supplies the complete project and source to reflectoron. All the samples in this tutorial are silverlight not wpf based. Sep 24, 2014 currently prism works with both mef and unity, but many quick starts and other tutorials were written some time ago and concentrate on unity rather than on mef. I cant be the only one using wpf, mvvm, prism and mef. Prism leverages mef as one type of dependency injection container. You can find the other posts in the series here how to use unity in a web application, here adding interfaces, here registration by convention, here injecting values, here extensions, here aspectoriented programming, here dependency. Managing dependencies between components using the prism. There are other options like castle windsor, autofac etc are available.
The interesting part of this application is that views can be imported into the main. I do not have a preference over the different methods as i have built prism 2 using unity and migrating prism 4 using unity. Unity works in a more obvious way, you call the container and ask the desired class. Starting our application lets create a wpf application now using prism.
Net reflector as his sample, and created a wpf ui for. The prism library provides two options for dependency injection containers. In this course you will learn how to design and build windows presentation foundation wpf desktop applications, silverlight rich internet applications rias, and. It does container type functions, but it really isnt meant to be used that way. Experimenting with prism 4, silverlight, mef mike taulty. Mar 25, 2010 in silverlight this can be achieved using prism andor mef other than allowing the customer by customer i mean their inhouse developer to amend the dom or override the view pages im finding it hard to understand how they would do it in an asp. For more information, see the prism home page on msdn. Also, do not update the unity container packages separately. Jan 03, 2010 about a month ago i posted some ideas around mef and prism together. After you install your bits, you will get a folder named prism on your local drive.
Dec 09, 2009 one of the most highly anticipated of the new technologies coming in. As part of the post, i presented 2 highlevel scenarios for mefprism integration and there are likely more use prism with mef as an addon for extensibility. Download source code for dependency injection with unity and mef in asp. As one example, in windows presentation foundation wpf, microsoft prism extends unity to include many of the search options that mef offers.