What is Inversion of Control?

The Inversion-of-Control (IoC) pattern, is about providing any kind of callback (which controls reaction), instead of acting ourself directly (in other words, inversion and/or redirecting control to external handler/controller). The Dependency-Injection (DI) pattern is a more specific version of IoC pattern, and is all about removing dependencies from your code.

Every DI implementation can be considered IoC, but one should not call it IoC, because implementing Dependency-Injection is harder than callback (Don't lower your product's worth by using general term "IoC" instead).

For DI example, say your application has a text-editor component, and you want to provide spell checking. Your standard code would look something like this:

public class TextEditor {

    private SpellChecker checker;

    public TextEditor() {
        this.checker = new SpellChecker();
    }
}

What we've done here creates a dependency between the TextEditor and the SpellChecker. In an IoC scenario we would instead do something like this:

public class TextEditor {

    private IocSpellChecker checker;

    public TextEditor(IocSpellChecker checker) {
        this.checker = checker;
    }
}

In the first code example we are instantiating SpellChecker (this.checker = new SpellChecker();), which means the TextEditor class directly depends on the SpellChecker class.

In the second code example we are creating an abstraction by having the SpellChecker dependency class in TextEditor's constructor signature (not initializing dependency in class). This allows us to call the dependency then pass it to the TextEditor class like so:

SpellChecker sc = new SpellChecker(); // dependency
TextEditor textEditor = new TextEditor(sc);

Now the client creating the TextEditor class has control over which SpellChecker implementation to use because we're injecting the dependency into the TextEditor signature.

Inversion of Controls is about separating concerns.

Without IoC: You have a laptop computer and you accidentally break the screen. And darn, you find the same model laptop screen is nowhere in the market. So you're stuck.

With IoC: You have a desktop computer and you accidentally break the screen. You find you can just grab almost any desktop monitor from the market, and it works well with your desktop.

Your desktop successfully implements IoC in this case. It accepts a variety type of monitors, while the laptop does not, it needs a specific screen to get fixed.

What is Inversion of Control?

If you follow these simple two steps, you have done inversion of control:

1. Separate what-to-do part from when-to-do part.
2. Ensure that when part knows as little as possible about what part; and vice versa.

There are several techniques possible for each of these steps based on the technology/language you are using for your implementation.

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The inversion part of the Inversion of Control (IoC) is the confusing thing; because inversion is the relative term. The best way to understand IoC is to forget about that word!

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Examples

• Event Handling. Event Handlers (what-to-do part) -- Raising Events (when-to-do part)
• Dependency Injection. Code that constructs a dependency (what-to-do part) -- instantiating and injecting that dependency for the clients when needed, which is usually taken care of by the DI tools such as Dagger (when-to-do-part).
• Interfaces. Component client (when-to-do part) -- Component Interface implementation (what-to-do part)
• xUnit fixture. Setup and TearDown (what-to-do part) -- xUnit frameworks calls to Setup at the beginning and TearDown at the end (when-to-do part)
• Template method design pattern. template method when-to-do part -- primitive subclass implementation what-to-do part
• DLL container methods in COM. DllMain, DllCanUnload, etc (what-to-do part) -- COM/OS (when-to-do part)

Inversion of Control is what you get when your program callbacks, e.g. like a gui program.

For example, in an old school menu, you might have:

print "enter your name"
read name
print "enter your address"
read address
etc...
store in database

thereby controlling the flow of user interaction.

In a GUI program or somesuch, instead we say:

when the user types in field a, store it in NAME
when the user types in field b, store it in ADDRESS
when the user clicks the save button, call StoreInDatabase

So now control is inverted... instead of the computer accepting user input in a fixed order, the user controls the order in which the data is entered, and when the data is saved in the database.

Basically, anything with an event loop, callbacks, or execute triggers falls into this category.