c# - ASP.NET MVC Controller Lifecycle

Question

It's my understanding that the constructor for a controller is not called during each web request. Assuming this is true, what is the lifecycle of a controller? Is is "constructed" upon app start, then cached and invoked with the requestcontext injected into it with each web request?

Just to be clear, I'm not asking how to emulate constructor behavior, I use the OnActionExecuting event to initiate things I would normally do in a constructor. Also, I do use constructors on controllers for unit and system testing.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you use the default controller factory a new instance will be constructed for each request and that's the way it should be. Controllers shouldn't be shared among different requests. You could though write a custom factory that manages the lifetime of the controllers.