Hot Chocolate is deeply integrated with Microsoft.Extension.DependencyInjection but can also be used with other dependency injection frameworks as long as they implement IServiceProvider.

While it is possible to have constructor dependency injection on GraphQL type objects themselves it should be avoided. Think of the GraphQL types as System.Types. Dependency injection is best used on the runtime types, that are passed through the execution engine.

GraphQL Type

public class QueryType : ObjectType<Query>
{
    // code omitted for brevity
}

Runtime Type

public class Query
{
    // code omitted for brevity
}

Root runtime types and extension runtime types do not need to be registered with the dependency injection. Hot Chocolate will use the dependency injection and handle them as singletons by keeping the instance for the lifetime of the IRequestExecutor.

Lets say we have a singleton service IUserRepository and our class Query.

public class Query
{
    public Query(IUserRepository repository)
    {

    }

    // code omitted for brevity
}

With this configuration we can just do the following:

services
    .AddSingleton<IUserRepository, UserRepository>()
    .AddGraphQLServer()
    .AddQueryType<Query>()

But if we had a scoped user repository and used constructor injection on our Query we would need to register our Query class with the dependency injection and Hot Chocolate would resolve it automatically from there.

services
    .AddScoped<IUserRepository, UserRepository>()
    .AddScoped<Query>()
    .AddGraphQLServer()
    .AddQueryType<Query>()

The same behavior is true for type extensions.

[ExtendObjectType(OperationTypes.Query)]
public class UserQueries
{
    public UserQueries(IUserRepository repository)
    {

    }

    // code omitted for brevity
}

services
    .AddScoped<IUserRepository, UserRepository>()
    .AddScoped<UserQueries>()
    .AddGraphQLServer()
    .AddQueryType()
    .AddTypeExtension<UserQueries>()

Method-Level Dependency Injection

Hot Chocolate also allows for method-level dependency injection. This allows you to create side-effect free resolvers regarding the dependency injection. We in general advise to use method-level dependency injection on resolvers for better execution performance and simpler maintenance.

public async Task<User> GetUserAsync([Service] IUserRepository repository)
{
    // The user repository can just be used by this resolver,
    // it does not matter if it is transient, scoped or singleton.
}

In this case you can keep the simpler configuration and let Hot Chocolate take care of the lifetime.

services
    .AddSingleton<IUserRepository, UserRepository>()
    .AddGraphQLServer()
    .AddQueryType<Query>()

This also benefits the execution engine since it knows which services are used and how to optimize execution.

Note: For method-level dependency injection we also allow to reuse the FromServicesAttribute from ASP.NET core.

Custom Dependency Injection Container

In order to override the default dependency injection container you need to override the DefaultHttpRequestInterceptor and the DefaultSocketSessionInterceptor.

1. Inherit from DefaultHttpRequestInterceptor and override OnCreateAsync.

public class CustomHttpRequestInterceptor : DefaultHttpRequestInterceptor
{
    public async override ValueTask OnCreateAsync(
        HttpContext context,
        IRequestExecutor requestExecutor,
        IQueryRequestBuilder requestBuilder,
        CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        await base.OnCreateAsync(context, requestExecutor, requestBuilder, cancellationToken);
        requestBuilder.SetServices(CUSTOM_SERVICE_PROVIDER);
    }
}

2. Register CustomHttpRequestInterceptor with the root ServiceCollection.

services
    .AddGraphQLServer()
    .AddHttpRequestInterceptor<CustomHttpRequestInterceptor>();

3. Next, inherit from DefaultSocketSessionInterceptor and override OnRequestAsync.

public class CustomSocketSessionInterceptor : DefaultSocketSessionInterceptor
{
    public async override ValueTask OnRequestAsync(
        ISocketConnection connection,
        IQueryRequestBuilder requestBuilder,
        CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        await OnRequestAsync(connection, requestBuilder, cancellationToken);
        requestBuilder.SetServices(CUSTOM_SERVICE_PROVIDER);
    }
}

4. Last, register your CustomSocketSessionInterceptor with the root ServiceCollection.

services
    .AddGraphQLServer()
    .AddSocketSessionInterceptor<CustomSocketSessionInterceptor>();