ASP.NET Core Dependency Injection error: Unable to resolve service for type while attempting to activate

I created an .NET Core MVC application and use Dependency Injection and Repository Pattern to inject a repository to my controller. However, I am getting an error:

InvalidOperationException: Unable to resolve service for type 'WebApplication1.Data.BloggerRepository' while attempting to activate 'WebApplication1.Controllers.BlogController'.

Model (Blog.cs)

namespace WebApplication1.Models
{
    public class Blog
    {
        public int BlogId { get; set; }
        public string Url { get; set; }
    }
}

DbContext (BloggingContext.cs)

using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;
using WebApplication1.Models;

namespace WebApplication1.Data
{
    public class BloggingContext : DbContext
    {
        public BloggingContext(DbContextOptions<BloggingContext> options)
            : base(options)
        { }
        public DbSet<Blog> Blogs { get; set; }
    }
}

Repository (IBloggerRepository.cs & BloggerRepository.cs)

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using WebApplication1.Models;

namespace WebApplication1.Data
{
    internal interface IBloggerRepository : IDisposable
    {
        IEnumerable<Blog> GetBlogs();

        void InsertBlog(Blog blog);

        void Save();
    }
}

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using WebApplication1.Models;

namespace WebApplication1.Data
{
    public class BloggerRepository : IBloggerRepository
    {
        private readonly BloggingContext _context;

        public BloggerRepository(BloggingContext context)
        {
            _context = context;
        }

        public IEnumerable<Blog> GetBlogs()
        {
            return _context.Blogs.ToList();
        }

        public void InsertBlog(Blog blog)
        {
            _context.Blogs.Add(blog);
        }

        public void Save()
        {
            _context.SaveChanges();
        }

        private bool _disposed;

        protected virtual void Dispose(bool disposing)
        {
            if (!_disposed)
            {
                if (disposing)
                {
                    _context.Dispose();
                }
            }
            _disposed = true;
        }

        public void Dispose()
        {
            Dispose(true);
            GC.SuppressFinalize(this);
        }
    }
}

Startup.cs (relevant code)

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    // Add framework services.
    services.AddDbContext<BloggingContext>(options =>
        options.UseSqlServer(Configuration.GetConnectionString("DefaultConnection")));

    services.AddScoped<IBloggerRepository, BloggerRepository>();

    services.AddMvc();

    // Add application services.
    services.AddTransient<IEmailSender, AuthMessageSender>();
    services.AddTransient<ISmsSender, AuthMessageSender>();
}

Controller (BlogController.cs)

using System.Linq;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;
using WebApplication1.Data;
using WebApplication1.Models;

namespace WebApplication1.Controllers
{
    public class BlogController : Controller
    {
        private readonly IBloggerRepository _repository;

        public BlogController(BloggerRepository repository)
        {
            _repository = repository;
        }

        public IActionResult Index()
        {
            return View(_repository.GetBlogs().ToList());
        }

        public IActionResult Create()
        {
            return View();
        }

        [HttpPost]
        [ValidateAntiForgeryToken]
        public IActionResult Create(Blog blog)
        {
            if (ModelState.IsValid)
            {
                _repository.InsertBlog(blog);
                _repository.Save();
                return RedirectToAction("Index");
            }
            return View(blog);
        }
    }
}

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Any ideas?

Solution 1:

To break down the error message:

Unable to resolve service for type 'WebApplication1.Data.BloggerRepository' while attempting to activate 'WebApplication1.Controllers.BlogController'.

That is saying that your application is trying to create an instance of BlogController but it doesn't know how to create an instance of BloggerRepository to pass into the constructor.

Now look at your startup:

services.AddScoped<IBloggerRepository, BloggerRepository>();

That is saying whenever a IBloggerRepository is required, create a BloggerRepository and pass that in.

However, your controller class is asking for the concrete class BloggerRepository and the dependency injection container doesn't know what to do when asked for that directly.

I'm guessing you just made a typo, but a fairly common one. So the simple fix is to change your controller to accept something that the DI container does know how to process, in this case, the interface:

public BlogController(IBloggerRepository repository)
//                    ^
//                    Add this!
{
    _repository = repository;
}

Note that some objects have their own custom ways to be registered, this is more common when you use external Nuget packages, so it pays to read the documentation for them. For example if you got a message saying:

Unable to resolve service for type 'Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http.IHttpContextAccessor' ...

Then you would fix that using the custom extension method provided by that library which would be:

services.AddHttpContextAccessor();

For other packages - always read the docs.

Solution 2:

I ran into this issue because in the dependency injection setup I was missing a dependency of a repository that is a dependency of a controller:

services.AddScoped<IDependencyOne, DependencyOne>();    <-- I was missing this line!
services.AddScoped<IDependencyTwoThatIsDependentOnDependencyOne, DependencyTwoThatIsDependentOnDependencyOne>();

Solution 3:

In my case I was trying to do dependency injection for an object which required constructor arguments. In this case, during Startup I just provided the arguments from the configuration file, for example:

var config = Configuration.GetSection("subservice").Get<SubServiceConfig>();
services.AddScoped<ISubService>(provider => new SubService(config.value1, config.value2));

Solution 4:

I was having a different problem, and yeah the parameterized constructor for my controller was already added with the correct interface. What I did was something straightforward. I just go to my startup.cs file, where I could see a call to register method.

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
   services.Register();
}

In my case, this Register method was in a separate class Injector. So I had to add my newly introduced Interfaces there.

public static class Injector
{
    public static void Register(this IServiceCollection services)
    {
        services.AddTransient<IUserService, UserService>();
        services.AddTransient<IUserDataService, UserDataService>();
    }
}

If you see, the parameter to this function is this IServiceCollection

Hope this helps.