How can I add an existing instance to a MEF catalog?

Question

I have an object instance, and I want to end up with a MEF catalog that contains that object instance, exported as a specific interface type. How can I do this?

TypeCatalog doesn't seem workable here, because (a) it creates a new instance instead of using an existing one, and (b) it requires the type to have an [Export] attribute. In my case, the instance comes from MEF's metadata system, so MEF creates the underlying type and I can't add attributes to it.

As far as I can tell, the usual advice is, if you've got an existing instance, you should add it to the container (e.g. via CompositionBatch), not to the catalog. But when I add this instance, I'm also adding an entire AssemblyCatalog worth of types, all in the same operation. I'll also want to be able to remove all of these types later. It makes more sense to me to bundle everything into an AggregateCatalog. That way, I can add both the assembly and the instance in one atomic operation, and I can remove them all again the same way.

For example:

// Bootstrapper code to initialize MEF:
public void Configure() {
    _selectedGameCatalog = new AggregateCatalog();
    var globalCatalog = new AggregateCatalog(_selectedGameCatalog);
    _container = new CompositionContainer(globalCatalog);
    // ... more MEF initialization ...
}

// Sometime later, I want to add more stuff to the MEF ecosystem:
public void SelectGame(Lazy<Game, IGameMetadata> entry) {
    var newCatalog = new AggregateCatalog();
    // Make the assembly available to import:
    newCatalog.Catalogs.Add(new AssemblyCatalog(entry.Value.GetType().Assembly));

    // I also want the metadata to be available to import:
    IGameMetadata metadata = entry.Metadata;
    newCatalog.Catalogs.Add(MakeCatalogFromInstance<IGameMetadata>(metadata));

    // Replace whatever game was selected before:
    _selectedGameCatalog.Catalogs.Clear();
    _selectedGameCatalog.Catalogs.Add(newCatalog);
}

The part I don't know how to do is "MakeCatalogFromInstance". How can I create a catalog that contains an existing instance (registered as a specific type)?

Or, alternatively, if I'm going about this all wrong, is there a better way to plug an entire catalog and an existing instance all into MEF at the same time, with the ability to unplug them all again later and replace them with something else?

Answer 1

I think it's probably best to add the types to the catalog and then add the instance to the container.

Catalogs contain part definitions. Part definitions are used to create parts. (The types for this are ComposablePartDefinition and ComposablePart.) So you could theoretically write your own catalog and a part definition that always returned a part corresponding to the instance when CreatePart was called. But catalogs weren't really designed to be used this way.