Adding Autofac to WPF MVVM application

Expanding on my comment above:

I use Autofac with all my WPF MVVM applications, I believe it to be one of the better DI frameworks - this is my opinion, but I think it is valid.

Also for me PRISM should be avoided 99% of the time, it's a 'solution looking for a problem' and since most people don't build dynamically composable runtime solutions in WPF it is not needed, i'm sure people would\will disagree.

Like any architectural patterns there is a setup\configuration phase to the application life-cycle, put simply in your case before the first View (window) is shown there will be a whole of setup done for Dependency Injection, Logging, Exception Handling, Dispatcher thread management, Themes etc.

I have several examples of using Autofac with WPF\MVVM, a couple are listed below, I would say look at the Simple.Wpf.Exceptions example:

https://github.com/oriches/Simple.Wpf.Exceptions

https://github.com/oriches/Simple.Wpf.DataGrid

https://github.com/oriches/Simple.MahApps.Template

You can use a similar technique as your console application:

class Program{    [STAThread]    static void Main(string[] args)    {        var builder = new ContainerBuilder();        builder.RegisterType<Cleaner>().As<ICleaner>();        builder.RegisterType<Repository>().AsImplementedInterfaces().InstancePerLifetimeScope();        // Add the MainWindowclass and later resolve        build.RegisterType<MainWindow>().AsSelf();        var container = builder.Build();        using (var scope = container.BeginLifetimeScope())        {            var main = scope.Resolve<MainWindow>();            main.ShowDialog();        }    }}

Be sure to mark Main with [STAThread]. Then in the project's properties, under the Application tab, set the Startup object to the Program class.

However, I am not certain of the implications of not running App.Run() and of running MainWindow.ShowDialog() instead.

To do the same using App.Run(), do the following:

1) delete StartupUri="MainWindow.xaml" from App.xaml

2) Add the following to App.xaml.cs

protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e){    var builder = new ContainerBuilder();    builder.RegisterType<Cleaner>().As<ICleaner>();    builder.RegisterType<Repository>().AsImplementedInterfaces().InstancePerLifetimeScope();    // Add the MainWindowclass and later resolve    build.RegisterType<MainWindow>().AsSelf();    var container = builder.Build();    using (var scope = container.BeginLifetimeScope())    {        var window = scope.Resolve<MainWindow>();        window.Show();    }}

WPF doesn't have a natural composition root or easy DI integration. Prism is a pretty common set of libraries specifically intended to bridge that for you.

(That's not Autofac specific - it's general guidance for adding DI to WPF apps.)