ControllerFactory : Entity Framework

I recently followed Stephen Walther through creating a generic repository for your data models using the Entity Framework with the following link, http://bit.ly/7BoMjT

In this blog he briefly talks about creating a generic repository and why it's suggested to do so (to be clear of frictio开发者_如何学Cn). The blog itself doesn't go into great detail on how to inject the GenericRepository into your project for that you'll need to download his source code of Common Code. However, once I finally understood the importance of the Repository pattern, and how it makes a difference in the data models I create in ASP.Net MVC I was wondering if I could do something similar to my Controllers and Views?

Can I create a ControllerRepository or ControllerFactory(as I've Bing'd it) and create a generic controller with 5 ActionResults and depending on what I inject into my GenericRepository datamodel (i.e. I have DellXPSComputers, GateWayComputers, HPComputers as a single db datamodel)

And actually have only one controller besides the Generic one I create that will go and grab the right datamodel, and view?

If so, what is the best way to implement this?

You could create a generic controller factory, but I don't see many scenarios why you'd ever want to. Except in your tests and redirects, you'd never be calling a controller method directly (vs. a repository method which you're calling in many places).

Yes! You absolutely can!

I've done it in the past with great success. The result is that you end up with a web application layer surfacing your repos with almost no code (just what's necessary to provide CRUD services for your entities).

Ultimately, you'll end up with something like this in your implementation of CreateController:

Type controllerType = controllerbase.MakeGenericType(entityType, datacontextType);
var controller = Activator.CreateInstance(controllerType) as IController;
return controller;

Wiser men than me would use a IOC framework to inject the types, I'm using plain old reflection and reading the type names out of the route values in URLs like:

http://computer/repo/entityname/by/fieldname/value.html

Good luck!