ThreadSafety.md

Thread Safety

Swinject is designed to be used in concurrent applications. Container itself is not thread safe, but its synchronize method returns a thread safe view to the container as Resolver type.

let container = Container()
container.register(SomeType.self) { _ in SomeImplementation() }

let threadSafeContainer: Resolver = container.synchronize()

// Do something concurrently.
for _ in 0..<4 {
    dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(QOS_CLASS_DEFAULT, 0)) {
        let resolvedInstance = threadSafeContainer.resolve(SomeType.self)
        // ...
    }
}

Component Registrations

Since the thread safe view of a container is Resolver type, which has only overloads of resolve methods, registrations to the container are not thread safe. Registrations must be performed on a single thread, typically at the time when an app starts up.

Service Resolutions

Only resolutions through the Resolver instance returned by synchronize method are thread safe. Calling resolve method directly on a Container instance is not thread safe.

If you have a container hierarchy (parent-child relationship of containers), all the containers must be accessed through the thread safe views when you resolve services.

let parentContainer = Container()
parentContainer.register(SomeType.self) { _ in SomeImplementation() }

let parentResolver = parentContainer.synchronize()
let childResolver = Container(parent: parentContainer).synchronize()

// Do something concurrently.
for _ in 0..<4 {
    dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(QOS_CLASS_DEFAULT, 0)) {
        let instanceFromParent = parentResolver.resolve(SomeType.self)
        // ...
    }
    dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(QOS_CLASS_DEFAULT, 0)) {
        let instanceFromChild = childResolver.resolve(SomeType.self)
        // ...
    }
}

SwinjectStoryboard

SwinjectStoryboard does not require the thread safe view of a container in most of the cases because instantiation of a view controller is normally performed on the main thread. Only if you use the same container in another thread, the synchronized view should be passed to SwinjectStoryboard when you create its instance and be used in the other thread too.

let threadSafeContainer: Resolver = Container() { container in
    container.registerForStoryboard(SomeViewController.self) { r, c in
        c.something = r.resolve(SomeType.self)
    }
    container.register(SomeType.self) { _ in SomeImplementation() }
}.synchronize()

let storyboard = SwinjectStoryboard.create(
    name: "Main",
    bundle: NSBundle.mainBundle(),
    container: threadSafeContainer)

// Do something on a background thread.
dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(QOS_CLASS_DEFAULT, 0)) {
    let something = threadSafeContainer.resolve(SomeType.self)
    // ...
}

// Instantiate a view controller on the main thread.
let viewController = storyboard.instantiateInitialViewController()

Refer to Storyboard README for more details about SwinjectStoryboard itself.

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