How to use Action Filters with Dependency Injection in ASP.NET CORE?

Question

I use constructor-based dependency injection everywhere in my ASP.NET CORE application and I also need to resolve dependencies in my action filters:

public class MyAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public int Limit { get; set; } // some custom parameters passed from Action
    private ICustomService CustomService { get; } // this must be resolved

    public MyAttribute()
    {
    }

    public override async Task OnActionExecutionAsync(ActionExecutingContext context, ActionExecutionDelegate next)
    {
        // my code
        ...

        await next();
    }
}

Then in Controller:

[MyAttribute(Limit = 10)]
public IActionResult()
{
    ...

If I put ICustomService to the constructor, then I'm unable to compile my project. So, how do I supossed to get interface instances in action filter?

Answer 1

If you want to avoid the Service Locator pattern you can use DI by constructor injection with a TypeFilter.

In your controller use

[TypeFilter(typeof(MyActionFilterAttribute), Arguments = new object[] {10})]
public IActionResult() NiceAction
{
   ...
}

And your ActionFilterAttribute does not need to access a service provider instance anymore.

public class MyActionFilterAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public int Limit { get; set; } // some custom parameters passed from Action
    private ICustomService CustomService { get; } // this must be resolved

    public MyActionFilterAttribute(ICustomService service, int limit)
    {
        CustomService = service;
        Limit = limit;
    }

    public override async Task OnActionExecutionAsync(ActionExecutingContext context, ActionExecutionDelegate next)
    {
        await next();
    }
}

For me the annotation [TypeFilter(typeof(MyActionFilterAttribute), Arguments = new object[] {10})]seems to be awkward. In order to get a more readable annotation like [MyActionFilter(Limit = 10)]your filter has to inherit from TypeFilterAttribute. My answer of How do I add a parameter to an action filter in asp.net? shows an example for this approach.