Problem with Ninject and MVC3 Dependency injection action filter on Controller and Action

Question

Recently I decided to remove a heap of action level filters in a controller and replace them with a single controller level filter.

Now I'm getting this error message.

Error activating LogActionFilter
More than one matching bindings are available.
Activation path:
 1) Request for LogActionFilter

Suggestions:
 1) Ensure that you have defined a binding for LogActionFilter only once.

I'm sure the error is related to action filter being bound twice, as that's what I've changed. However, when I view the documentation here I can see it specifies/does the same. So I'm really not sure what I'm doing wrong.

My sample controller

[LogAction]
public class SomeController : Controller
{
    public ActionResult SomeAction()
    { 

    }
}

My registration code

public static void RegisterFilters()
{
    Kernel.BindFilter<LogActionFilter>(FilterScope.Controller, 0)
    .WhenControllerHas<LogActionAttribute>();

    Kernel.BindFilter<LogActionFilter>(FilterScope.Action, 0)
        .WhenActionMethodHas<LogActionAttribute>();
}

Answer 1

This happens if your controller and one of its actions have the LogActionAttribute at the same time.

Answer 2

(I know the answer's already accepted but this is for the sake of documentation.)

In case you can only use the release version, a temporary solution is to create two subclasses and register them separately. Here's an example from my application:

public class MyAuthorizationFilter : IAuthorizationFilter
{
   /* call base ctor */
}

public class MyControllerAuthorizationFilter : MyAuthorizationFilter
{
   /* call base ctor */
}

public class MyActionAuthorizationFilter : MyAuthorizationFilter
{
}

Then setup filter bindings:

this.BindFilter<MyControllerAuthorizationFilter>(FilterScope.Controller, 0)
            .WhenControllerHas<MyAttribute>()
            .WithConstructorArgumentFromControllerAttribute<ProtectedAttribute>(/*...*/) ;

this.BindFilter<MyActionAuthorizationFilter>(FilterScope.Action, 0)
            .WhenActionMethodHas<MyAttribute>()
            .WithConstructorArgumentFromActionAttribute<ProtectedAttribute>(/*...*/) ;

Make sure to call the correct 'WithConstructorArgumentFrom[Controller/Action]Attribute method or you'll get a 'Sequence has no elements' error (I did).

Answer 3

Better workaround. In fact I use this in the new version too rather than have two bindings for controllers and actions.

this.BindFilter<MyFilter>(FilterScope.Global, int.MinValue)
    .When((controllerContext, actionDescriptor) =>
                                                 controllerContext
                                                .Controller
                                                .GetType()
                                                .GetCustomAttributes(typeof(MyAttribute),true)
                                                .Length > 0 
    || actionDescriptor.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(MyAttribute), true).Length > 0);