What control do I have over the TypedFactory Windsor implements? - castle-windsor

Question

My colleague set up a Windsor TypedFactoryFacility in our project.
I'm new to Windsor and don't understand how it is implementing the the methods in the IServiceFactory interface we register as a factory. When I saw a Create method that takes a type parameter T and returns a T, I figured that it's probably calling the container's Resolve method under the covers.
I need an overload of Create that takes a Type as a parameter and returns an object. Since the container's Resolve method has both of these flavors:
T Resolve<T>(string key);
object Resolve(Type service);
I thought adding the overload of Create would work. Instead, it appears to be trying to resolve a System.Object instead of the Type I pass in.
Is there a way to make Windsor implement my Create method the way I want it to? I've poked around a bit with reflector, but can't figure it out.
Here is the registration:
container.AddFacility<TypedFactoryFacility>();
container.Register(
Component.For<IServiceFactory>()
.AsFactory()
.LifeStyle.Transient);
and the interface itself:
public interface IServiceFactory
{
//Original Create method that works
T Create<T>();
//The overload that I need that throws an exception
object Create(Type service)
void Release(object service);
}

Answer 1

Do you want to call something like serviceFactory.Create(typeof(IMyServce)) instead of serviceFactory.Create<IMyService>()?
Try using reflection in an extension method, like this
public static class ServiceFactoryExtensions
{
public static object Create(this IServiceFactory factory, Type serviceType)
{
return typeof(IServiceFactory).GetMethod("Create")
.MakeGenericMethod(serviceType).Invoke(factory, new object[]{});
}
}
EDIT:
This extension method does indeed work with a factory created by Castle Windsor.
Here's my original test code, which you can drop into Program.cs of a VS2010 console application, add a reference to Castle.Core and Castle.Windsor, and run. I used Castle.Windsor 2.5.4.
using System;
using Castle.Facilities.TypedFactory;
using Castle.MicroKernel.Registration;
using Castle.Windsor;
namespace StackOverflow9198461
{
public static class ServiceFactoryExtensions
{
public static object Create(this IServiceFactory factory, Type serviceType)
{
return typeof(IServiceFactory).GetMethod("Create")
.MakeGenericMethod(serviceType)
.Invoke(factory, new object[] { });
}
}
class Program
{
static void Main()
{
var container = new WindsorContainer();
container.AddFacility<TypedFactoryFacility>();
container.Register(Component
.For<IServiceFactory>()
.AsFactory());
container.Register(Component
.For<IMyService>()
.ImplementedBy<MyService>()
.LifeStyle.Singleton);
var factory = container.Resolve<IServiceFactory>();
var s1 = factory.Create<IMyService>();
var s2 = factory.Create(typeof(IMyService));
Console.WriteLine(s1.GetType().FullName);
Console.WriteLine(s2.GetType().FullName);
if (s1 == s2) Console.WriteLine("Success");
}
}
public interface IServiceFactory
{
//Original Create method that works
T Create<T>();
////The overload that I need that throws an exception
//object Create(Type service)
void Release(object service);
}
public class MyService : IMyService
{
}
public interface IMyService
{
}
}