Dependency Injection in .NET Book Review

Uhg. Sometimes my ability to be a complete ignoramus really annoys me. When I first saw this book on the upcoming list of books to be published I thought, "That sucks, I just got done reading Dependency Injection by Dhanji R. Prasanna last year. I don't need to read the .NET version", and so I ignored this book. As time went on I saw all the great reviews coming out about the book and it made me curious. A buddy of mine had purchased it and I know that Manning gives ebooks with there book purchases, so I asked to borrow it. I ordered the book the next day. I have nothing bad to say about Dependency Injection by Dhanji R. Prasanna, it was a great book. The difference is this one spoke my language of choice, .NET. It made the read so much better for me. Plus all the coverage of the popular DI Containers for .NET rocks. This book is broken down into 4 parts the first part introduces DI. Part two is a catalog of patterns, anti-patterns, and refactorings. Part three covers Object Composition, Lifetime Management, and Interception. Part four covers all the popular DI .NET Containers which include Castle Windsor, StructureMap, Spring.NET, Autofac, Unity, and MEF. One of the coolest things about the book is that it uses poor man's DI in the first 3 parts of the book to teach you how it all works, and then covers the popular DI .NET Containers in details to help you be more productive. Coverage of the popular DI .NET Containers is nice deep coverage which also highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each one. Each popular DI .NET Container gets its own chapter. There are also some nice feature and lifestyle comparison charts to help you zero in on which DI Container will fit your needs. The chapter on Object Composition is pretty cool too. It include coverage of console applications, ASP.NET MVC, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, ASP.NET (Web Forms), and PowerShell. The chapters on patterns and anti-patterns are a really big help in making sure you are using DI correctly. The patterns covered include Constructor Injection, Property Injection, Method Injection, and Ambient Context. The anti-patterns covered include Control Freak, Bastard Injection, Constrained Construction, and Service Locator. Both include nice code samples. The chapter on DI refactoring covers mapping runtime value to abstractions, working with short-lived dependencies, resolving cyclic dependencies, dealing with constructor over-injection, and monitoring coupling. This book is packed with diagrams that help you visualize the topic at hand. The author includes just the right amount. Over all I found this author's writing style made the book a nice cover to cover read, but I will also be keeping it near to use as a reference. I have been on projects that use Castle Windsor, StructureMap, Unity, and MEF, so having coverage of each handy will be nice. All the downloadable code is very well organized and usable. This book is not only about DI, it is about proper object oriented programming. Every .NET architect and developer should read this book.

Dependency Injection in .NET