Using StructureMap in ASP.NET MVC Areas

Question

I'm using StructureMap for IoC and it works fine for regular controllers but I can't make it work with Areas. I have the following AccountController in Administration Area:

public class AccountController : Controller
{
    private readonly IFormsAuthenticationService formsService;
    private readonly IMembershipService membershipService;

    public AccountController(IFormsAuthenticationService formsService, IMembershipService membershipService)
    {
        this.formsService = formsService;
        this.membershipService = membershipService;
    }
    ...
}

And here's the error:

System.InvalidOperationException: An error occurred when trying to create a controller of type 'Foo.Areas.Administration.Controllers.AccountController'. Make sure that the controller has a parameterless public constructor. ---> System.MissingMethodException: No parameterless constructor defined for this object.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT

StructureMap couldn't resolve MembershipProvider.
Here's the solution:

For<MembershipProvider>().Use(Membership.Providers["AspNetSqlMembershipProvider"]);

Answer 1

I doubt that this is a problem with areas because I am using them happily. It is more likely a pure IOC issue. You get this error when one of the injected services cannot be resolved by your container, which has the consequence that the container cannot match a signature for the constructor and tries to fall back to the empty constructor, which doesn't exist, rightly.

So, my first instinct would be to make sure that the two injected services are available. It is possible that one of them did not get created properly; a common cause is that the Membership provider cannot connect to its database, or similar.

For diagnosing, in your global.asax, after the container has been created, see if you can manually resolve those two services. I don't know SM, but something like:

var s = container.Resolve<IMembershipService>();

Satisfy yourself that both those services can be resolved.