Windsor installer configuration - castle-windsor

Question

I have an application built with Windsor, this application has features and al the components are manually registered inside xml which also contains their configuration. This is an example:
<component type="type">
<parameters>
[...]
</parameters>
</component>
I decided to refactor my components and separate them into windsor installers, one installer for each feature. My problem now is to decide where to put the configuration of the components registered inside each installer.
Before this decision, the user could find the appropriate configuration of the components mostly inside the parameters element of xml, and I did not have to write wire logic for that to work.
Now I'm a bit confused because it seems like I don't have anymore such automatism. Since I decided to declare the installers of my application by xml, I think it could be perfect if I could put this configuration inside the installr element like this:
<installers>
<install assembly="myassembly">
<parameters>
[...]
<parameters>
</install>
</installers>
I don't know if Windsor supports this syntax. If it does, then I wonder how I could access it from inside the installer and how to wire it up to my components and services.
Another accettable alternative could be to create and register on xml a component containing all the configuration of my feature:
<components>
<component type="featureConfiguration">
<parameters>
</parameters>
</component>
</components>
In this case I guess that I have to refactor my components to let them receive such type as argument in their constructor whereas before I had direct properties, in other words before I could tell exactly what were the dependencies of my components by looking at the code, with this new form I pass to them the whole configuration but I don't know anymore what specific properties of the configuration are used in this or that component.
To use this second solution and to avoid this confusion I should avoid to pass the whole configuration to my subcomponents, and let that single properties do the work, but I have to find a glue between the properties of this configuration component and the properties of the components and services of the installer.
I think that rather than a component I could also put all my configuration inside the properties element of xml:
<properties>
<featureConfiguration>
[property list]
</featureConfiguration>
</properties>
but again, I have to find the glue between each single property in the list and the properties of my components.
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you.

Answer 1

Maybe you will find this mixed solution helpful, depending on the level of the parameterization of your components that you need. Namely, you could perform the component registration in your installers and set the parameters of the components in a windsor config file. This is useful when you have parameterization needs on few of your components while letting Windsor handle all other dependencies.
Example:
Let's say that you have the following components.
public class MyComponent
{
public MyComponent(MyDependency dependency, string stringParameter, DateTime dateParameter)
{
this.Dependency = dependency;
this.StringParameter = stringParameter;
this.DateParameter = dateParameter;
}
public DateTime DateParameter { get; set; }
public string StringParameter { get; set; }
public MyDependency Dependency { get; set; }
}
public class MyDependency
{
}
Then you could use the following installer to register them.
public class MyInstaller : IWindsorInstaller
{
public void Install(IWindsorContainer container, IConfigurationStore store)
{
container.Register(Component.For<MyComponent>().Named("MyComponent"));
container.Register(Component.For<MyDependency>());
}
}
Note, that we have been explicit about the unique name of the component, set to MyComponent. But you can use also the default full name.
The windsor config file could look like this:
<configuration>
<components>
<component id="MyComponent">
<parameters>
<stringParameter>Some string</stringParameter>
<dateParameter>2013/09/25</dateParameter>
</parameters>
</component>
</components>
</configuration>
And now you can wrap it all together:
WindsorContainer container = new WindsorContainer();
container.Install(Configuration.FromXmlFile("windsor.config"));
container.Install(FromAssembly.This());
Note that the order of invoking the Install method is important; you must first install the config file settings.