A Time-Scoped Registration Mechanism for Microsoft .Extensions.DependencyInjection

The Microsoft Dependency Injection (DI) container provides three different types of registrations.

• Transient
• Scoped
• Singleton

A Transient registration will always create a new instance of a service when requested. When registered as Scoped, there will be a single instance within a scope. A scope can be anything and is created via the IServiceProvider.CreateScope() extension method. For example, in ASP.NET every HTTP request has it’s own scope. The last type is the Singleton (a GoF design pattern), this resolves always the same instance, as the name suggests.

These days I wanted to have a DI registration which will be time-scoped. As such, it will return a new instance, if the time in which it is valid runs out. You can think of it like a best-before date.

The reference time should be the time, when it is accessed (created) first.

A diagram on how a resolve of a service should work and when there are fresh instances created

Usage

Install the package DavidKroell.TimeScoped into your projects - it is available from NuGet.org.

With AddTimeScoped<TSerice> you can add a time-scoped service to the DI container. You can then resolve the time-scoped service as a generic interface: ITimeScoped<DummyService> This interface has a single property - Instance - which will be your real service.

var sc = new ServiceCollection();

sc.AddTimeScoped<DummyService>(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(3));

var provider = sc.BuildServiceProvider();

var timeScopedService = provider.GetRequiredService<ITimeScoped<DummyService>>();

var instance1 = timeScopedService.Instance;

await Task.Delay(5000);

// should return a new instance, because 3 seconds are over
var instance2 = timeScopedService.Instance;

Assert.AreNotSame(instance1, instance2);

Never store an instance of your real service in an variable! You should always access it within the wrapper class.

Implementation

The implementation of this is pretty simple. The main logic is all within the Instance getter method.

internal class TimeScopedProvider<TService> : ITimeScoped<TService> where TService : class
{
    private readonly IServiceProvider _provider;
    private readonly TimeSpan _validTimeSpan;
    private DateTime? _validUntil;
    private TService? _instance;
    public TService Instance => GetInstance();

    public TimeScopedProvider(IServiceProvider provider, TimeSpan validTimeSpan)
    {
        _provider = provider;
        _validTimeSpan = validTimeSpan;
    }

    private TService GetInstance()
    {
        if (_validUntil == null || _validUntil < DateTime.Now)
        {
            lock (this)
            {
                CleanupOldInstance();

                _instance = (TService) _provider.GetService(typeof(TService))!;

                _validUntil = DateTime.Now.Add(_validTimeSpan);
            }
        }

        return _instance!;
    }

    private void CleanupOldInstance()
    {
        if (_instance is IDisposable disposable)
        {
            disposable.Dispose();
        }

        _instance = null;
    }
}

Summary

You can use this implementation when you want a new instance from time to time, but not for every access. I’ve once used it for a simple cache implementation.