Home

Design-Time Configuration

Using Unity typically requires the configuration of a Dependency Injection (DI) container. You can configure a container by using the Unity API, a .NET configuration file, or to a limited degree by using attributes. This Wiki describes how to use a configuration file to supply the required configuration information.

Dependency injection is a very flexible pattern, and to be used successfully requires the developer to provide information to the container about his applications. The two most common configuration tasks are setting up type mappings and configuring injection of a type. Type mappings enable you to request a type from the container that results in the container returning an instance of a different type (typically a derived class or interface implementation). Configuring injection for a type entails specifying information such as which constructor gets called, which properties get injected, and what their values are. The Unity configuration schema encompasses these types of configuration and is also extensible to allow for additional kinds of configuration such as Unity interception configuration, see The Unity Configuration Schema. The following sections provide more details:

• Format of the Unity Configuration File
• Loading Configuration File Information into a Container
• Loading the Configuration from Alternative Files