Invex Hosting Extensions

Useful utilities for Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting — a tiny, dependency-light library that fills three common gaps in the generic host programming model.

Features

• Multi-interface registration — AddSingleton, AddScoped, and AddHostedService overloads that register one implementation under up to five service types, all resolving to the same instance. Particularly useful for exposing a running hosted service through its other interfaces.
• Host control — IHostControl, a drop-in superset of IHostApplicationLifetime that adds StopApplication(int exitCode) for graceful shutdown with a process exit code.
• Cycle background service — CycleBackgroundService, a BackgroundService base class that runs periodic work on a fixed, drift-free cadence with overrun catch-up and clean shutdown.

Installation

dotnet add package Invex.Extensions.Hosting

Targets net10.0, net9.0, net8.0, and netstandard2.0 (which covers .NET Framework 4.8 — the test suite runs on net48 against the netstandard2.0 build). The only runtime dependency is Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.Abstractions.

Quick start

using Invex.Extensions.Hosting;
using Invex.Extensions.Hosting.Control;
using Invex.Extensions.Hosting.Service;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting;

var builder = Host.CreateApplicationBuilder(args);

builder.Services.AddHostControl();                          // IHostControl
builder.Services.AddHostedService<IWorkerStatus, Worker>(); // hosted service + interface, one instance

await builder.Build().RunAsync();

public interface IWorkerStatus { bool IsBusy { get; } }

public sealed class Worker(IHostControl hostControl) : CycleBackgroundService, IWorkerStatus
{
    public bool IsBusy { get; private set; }

    protected override int CycleCadenceMs => 5_000; // every 5 seconds, on a fixed schedule

    protected override async Task ExecuteCycleAsync(CancellationToken stoppingToken)
    {
        IsBusy = true;
        try { await DoWorkAsync(stoppingToken); }
        catch (FatalException) { hostControl.StopApplication(exitCode: 1); }
        finally { IsBusy = false; }
    }
}

Documentation

📖 Documentation home	Overview and table of contents
🚀 Getting started	Installation and a 5-minute tour
🧩 Multi-interface registration	Shared-instance DI registrations
🛑 Host control	Graceful shutdown with exit codes
🔁 Cycle background service	Drift-free periodic workers
📚 API reference	Full public API documentation

License

MIT © Declan Smith