How do I register an object with the IApplicationContext in Spring.Net? - dependency-injection

Question

Spring documentation on http://springframework.net/docs/1.3.1/reference/html/objects.html says:
"In addition to object definitions which contain information on how to
create a specific object, the IApplicationContext implementations also
permit the registration of existing objects that are created outside
the container, by users. This is done by accessing the
ApplicationContext's IObjectFactory via the property ObjectFactory
which returns the IObjectFactory implementation
DefaultListableObjectFactory. DefaultListableObjectFactory supports
registration through the methods RegisterSingleton(..) and
RegisterObjectDefinition(..)."
I'm trying to access the ObjectFactory object after doing the following:
var context = ContextRegistry.GetContext();
But there is no ObjectFactory property. I'm using Spring.Net v1.3.1.20711 and have Spring.Core referenced in my project.
What am I missing?

Answer 1

The ObjectFactory property is not exposed by the IApplicationContext interface, but is part of the IConfigurableListableObjectFactory interface.
Your context variable will be of inferred type IApplicationContext, because of the return type of ContextRegistry.GetContext(), so in VS it will appear that the ObjectFactory property is not available. However, if you take a closer look, you will see that it is an XmlApplicationContext that has the ObjectFactory property, because it implements IConfigurableListableObjectFactory. As Sebastian points out in his answer, most (if not all) application contexts implement this interface.
E.g.:
var ctx = new XmlApplicationContext("objects.xml");
ctx.ObjectFactory.RegisterSingleton("MyObject2", new MyClass() { Name = "MyObject2"});
var o2 = (MyClass)ctx.GetObject("MyObject2");
Assert.AreEqual("MyObject2", o2.Name);

Answer 2

Just to add to Marjin's answer; here is an extension method to get the Factory which I use.
/// <summary>
/// Gets the ObjectFactory from the Spring context.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="context">The context.</param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static IConfigurableListableObjectFactory Factory(this IApplicationContext context)
{
return ((IConfigurableApplicationContext)context).ObjectFactory;
}