Table of Contents

Scope

A scope is a MonoBehaviour that declares dependency bindings for a part of your hierarchy.

In Saneject, you create a scope by inheriting from Scope and implementing DeclareBindings(). Every binding you declare in that method tells Saneject how to resolve a dependency type.

At injection time, Saneject uses scope bindings to resolve [Inject] fields, properties and methods for components below that scope's Transform. At runtime, the same scope also performs early setup for global registrations and runtime proxy swapping.

Scopes work on scene objects, prefab instances, and prefab assets. How they participate in injection and how their bindings resolve across scenes and prefabs depends on context filtering and context isolation settings. See Context for details.

Declaring bindings in a scope

Bindings are declared directly inside DeclareBindings():

using Plugins.Saneject.Runtime.Scopes;

public class EnemyScope : Scope
{
    protected override void DeclareBindings()
    {
        BindComponent<AIController>()
            .FromScopeSelf();
    }
}

This declares a binding for AIController and tells Saneject where to look for the instance (FromScopeSelf() means the scope's own Transform).

For more details and binding examples, see Bindings.

Hierarchy, overrides, and fallback

Saneject tries to resolve each injection target (Component with injected fields, properties, methods) from the nearest scope at the same transform or above it first, then walks up parent scopes until a matching binding is found. That means child scopes naturally override parent scopes for the same requested type.

Example:

flowchart TD
  subgraph Editor
    DI["Scene injection pass"]
  end

  subgraph Scene
    DI -->|Inject| EnemyAudioService["Enemy.audioService (IAudioService)"]
    DI -->|Inject| EnemyAIController["Enemy.aiController (AIController)"]
    EnemyAudioService -->|"Try resolve IAudioService -> Binding not found"| EnemyScope
    EnemyAIController -->|"Try resolve AIController -> Binding found"| EnemyScope
    EnemyScope -->|"Try resolve IAudioService -> Binding found"| RootScope
  end

using Plugins.Saneject.Runtime.Scopes;

public class RootScope : Scope
{
    protected override void DeclareBindings()
    {
        // AudioServiceAsset is a Unity asset type that implements IAudioService.
        BindAsset<IAudioService, AudioServiceAsset>()
            .FromResources("Audio/Service");
    }
}

using Plugins.Saneject.Runtime.Scopes;

public class EnemyScope : Scope
{
    protected override void DeclareBindings()
    {
        // Enemy-local AIController only. No IAudioService binding here.
        BindComponent<AIController>()
            .FromScopeSelf();
    }
}

using Plugins.Saneject.Runtime.Attributes;
using UnityEngine;

public partial class Enemy : MonoBehaviour
{
    [Inject, SerializeInterface]
    private IAudioService audioService; // Resolved from RootScope (fallback)

    [Inject]
    private AIController aiController; // Resolved from EnemyScope
}

IAudioService is not bound in EnemyScope, so Saneject walks up to RootScope and resolves it there. AIController is bound in EnemyScope, so it resolves locally without fallback.

Runtime behavior

Almost everything in Saneject happens at edit-time. However, a few things need to happen at runtime to facilitate dependencies between contexts that Unity cannot serialize (scene ↔ other scene, scene ↔ prefab asset).

Global components in scopes

Scopes can declare globally/statically available components with BindGlobal<T>():

using Plugins.Saneject.Runtime.Scopes;

public class BootstrapScope : Scope
{
    protected override void DeclareBindings()
    {
        BindGlobal<AudioManager>()
            .FromScopeSelf();
    }
}

How it works:

  • During editor injection, Saneject resolves the global component and serializes it in the same Scope that declares the global binding.
  • At runtime, Scope.Awake() registers those serialized components into GlobalScope (a static service locator).
  • This is usually used as a cheap lookup mechanism for runtime proxies that resolve with FromGlobalScope().
  • In Scope.OnDestroy(), the scope unregisters what it registered from GlobalScope, meaning that global components per local Scope have the same lifetime as the scope.
  • Scope has default execution order -10000, so scope runtime operations run before normal component Awake to avoid startup race conditions/null access issues.

Only one global registration per concrete component type is allowed. Duplicate global bindings for the same type are reported as invalid.

See Global scope for details.

Runtime proxy swap targets

A RuntimeProxy is an auto-generated ScriptableObject used as an editor-time stand-in for a real interface dependency when that real reference cannot be serialized directly in the current Scope context (for example, prefab to scene references).

During editor injection, when Saneject injects a runtime proxy into an interface field, it registers the owning component as a proxy swap target in the nearest Scope.

At runtime, Scope.Awake() (execution order -10000) runs right after global registration and calls Roslyn-generated SwapProxiesWithRealInstances() on each registered swap target. That generated method replaces proxy references with the real instances using normal field assignment, with no reflection.

The full proxy mechanism is documented in Runtime proxies.

Proxy swap flow:

  1. A binding uses FromRuntimeProxy() for an interface dependency.
  2. Injection writes a runtime proxy into the interface field and registers the owner as a swap target in the nearest Scope.
  3. In Scope.Awake(), the scope calls SwapProxiesWithRealInstances(), and the field is reassigned to the real instance.

Typical proxy binding setup:

public class CombatScope : Scope
{
    protected override void DeclareBindings()
    {
        BindComponent<ICombatService, CombatService>()
            .FromRuntimeProxy()
            .FromGlobalScope();

        BindGlobal<CombatService>()
            .FromScopeSelf();
    }
}

Typical consumer:

using Plugins.Saneject.Runtime.Attributes;
using UnityEngine;

public partial class CombatHud : MonoBehaviour
{
    [Inject, SerializeInterface]
    private ICombatService combatService;
}

See Runtime proxies and Serialized interfaces for details.