Using Unity, how do you register type mappings for generics? - entity-framework

Question

I'm trying to implement a repository solution for Entity Framework but I am having trouble registering the types that include generics using Unity.
Given:
// IRepository interface
public interface IRepository<TEntity>
{
// omitted for brevity
}
// Repository implementation
public class Repository<TEntity, TContext> : IRepository<TEntity>, IDisposable
where TEntity : class
where TContext : DbContext
{
// omitted for brevity
}
// service layer constructor
public MyServiceConstructor(IRepository<Account> repository)
{
_repository = repository;
}
I need to register the type mapping for IRepository to Repository. but I'm having trouble with the Unity syntax for this kind of mapping.
I have tried the following with no luck:
container.RegisterType<IRepository<>, typeof(Repository<,>)>();
container.RegisterType<typeof(IRepository<>), Repository<,>>();
EDIT
Based, on #Steven response I have the following implementation now:
// UnityRepository implementation
public class UnityRepository<TEntity> : Repository<TEntity, MyDbContextEntities>
where TEntity : class
{
public UnityRepository() : base(new MyDbContextEntities()) { }
}
// Unity bootstrapper
container.RegisterType(typeof(IRepository<>), typeof(UnityRepository<>));

Answer 1

You are trying to do the following:
container.RegisterType(typeof(IRepository<>), typeof(Repository<,>));
This would normally work, but won't do the trick in this case, since there is IRepository<TEntity> has one generic argument and Repository<TEntity, TContext> has two, and Unity (obviously) can't guess what type it should fill in for TContext.
What you need is this:
container.RegisterType(
typeof(IRepository<>),
typeof(Repository<, MyDbContextEntities>));
In other words, you'd want to supply the Repository<TEntity, TContext> as a partial open generic type (with one parameter filled in). Unfortunately, the C# compiler does not support this.
But even if the C# did support this, Unity doesn't support partial open generic types. In fact most IoC libraries eworks don't support this. And for that one library that does support it, you would still have to do the following (nasty thing) to create the partial open generic type:
Type myDbContextEntitiesRepositoryType =
typeof(Repository<,>).MakeGenericType(
typeof(Repository<,>).GetGenericParameters().First(),
typeof(MyDbContextEntities));
There's a easy trick work around to get this to work though: define a derived class with one generic type:
// Special implementation inside your Composition Root
public class UnityRepository<TEntity> : Repository<TEntity, MyDbContextEntities>
where TEntity : class
{
public UnityRepository([dependencies]) : base([dependencies]) { }
}
Now we can easily register this open generic type:
container.RegisterType(typeof(IRepository<>), typeof(UnityRepository<>));