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What is ConfigurationManager.AppSettings?

I'm using this, as a sample Authentication to try out. What I want to know is what happens in this line. i.e. ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ActiveDirectory.ResourceId"]). Would somebody be kind enough to explain it?

You can set the default configurations for your application in web.config file and access them using the ConfigurationManager.AppSettings property.
e.g.
web.config
<configuration>
<appSettings>
<add key="highestScore" value="200" />
<add key="defaultSport" value="Cricket" />
</appSettings>
</configuration>
Code
int maxScore = Convert.ToInt32(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["highestScore"]);
string Sport = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["defaultSport"].ToString();

The ActiveDirectory.ResourceId app setting for the AuthBot example you referenced is:
<add key="ActiveDirectory.ResourceId" value="https://graph.windows.net/" />
The reason the .ResourceId is graph.windows.net as opposed to graph.microsoft.com is explained some here: https://github.com/matvelloso/AuthBot/pull/10
They are both valid. It only depends on which one you configure your
application in AAD for. Not everybody has Office 365 and therefore not
everybody will have graph.microsoft.com so I'd rather just leave it
with the option that is more likely going to work for most people
--Matt Velloso

Castle Windsor / ActiveRecord / NHibernate: How to intercept/modify connection string

I have consolidated the connection string information for a number of C# .NET solutions that are in my possession. Previously, each project was storing its connection string in its own format, requiring me to modify several files for each installation of the software.
Only one remaining solution is giving me trouble. This particular solution uses Castle Windsor 2.0, ActiveRecord 2.0 and NHibernate 2.1. The code reads its configuration from an XML file. I wish to remove the connection string from the config file and set it programmatically in the code.
Here is the relevant section of code that initiates Windsor:
windsorContainer = new WindsorContainer(new XmlInterpreter(xmlFileName));
windsorContainer.Resolve<IWindsorConfigurator>().Configure(windsorContainer);
logger = windsorContainer.Resolve<ILogger>();
Here are the contents of the XML file:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
<properties>
<connectionString>Server=*****;Database=*****;User Id=*****;Password=*****</connectionString>
</properties>
<facilities>
<facility id="logging" type="Castle.Facilities.Logging.LoggingFacility, Castle.Facilities.Logging" loggingApi="log4net" configFile="Configs/log4net.config" />
<facility id="atm" type="Castle.Facilities.AutomaticTransactionManagement.TransactionFacility, Castle.Facilities.AutomaticTransactionManagement" />
<facility id="arfacility" type="Castle.Facilities.ActiveRecordIntegration.ActiveRecordFacility, Castle.Facilities.ActiveRecordIntegration" isDebug="false" isWeb="false">
<!-- Configure the namespaces for the models using Active Record Integration -->
<assemblies>
<item>ChronoSteril.Application</item>
</assemblies>
<config>
<add key="connection.driver_class" value="NHibernate.Driver.SqlClientDriver" />
<add key="dialect" value="NHibernate.Dialect.MsSql2005Dialect" />
<add key="connection.provider" value="NHibernate.Connection.DriverConnectionProvider" />
<add key="connection.connection_string" value="#{connectionString}" />
<add key="hibernate.cache.provider_class" value="NHibernate.Caches.SysCache.SysCacheProvider, NHibernate.Caches.SysCache" />
<add key="proxyfactory.factory_class" value="NHibernate.ByteCode.Castle.ProxyFactoryFactory, NHibernate.ByteCode.Castle" />
<add key="hibernate.expiration" value="60" />
</config>
</facility>
</facilities>
<components>
<component id="windsorConfigurator" service="ChronoSteril.Application.IWindsorConfigurator, ChronoSteril.Application" type="ChronoSteril.WinApp.ClarionIntegrationWindsorConfigurator, ChronoSteril.WinApp" />
</components>
I am not familiar with Windsor. During my Google tour, I did see some code that adds facilities programmatically, but those examples were not valid for my version of Windsor (I assume).
Question: Can anyone guide me in removing the connection string information from the XML file and allow me to set it in the code?
Thank you!

I managed to accomplish my intention. It is not ideal, but will work until the code base is rewritten. (I cannot wait to drop the existing code like a bad dream.)
Patrick's comment, under my initial question, let me to refine my search criteria, which yielded the thread located here.
My XML file remains the same, except that I use bogus values for the connection string information. I will never need to modify these, and they do not reveal any valid connection information. This was my intention. I still have not discovered how to successfully remove the ActiveRecord configuration from the XML file and configure using code.
I now call a method that contains the following code:
ISessionFactoryHolder sessionFactoryHolder = ActiveRecordMediator.GetSessionFactoryHolder();
NHibernate.Cfg.Configuration configuration = sessionFactoryHolder.GetConfiguration(typeof(ActiveRecordBase));
connectionString = ReadConnectionString();
configuration.SetProperty("connection.connection_string", connectionString);
This works for me. I hope that it can also help someone else who is in the same position as I was.

Adding and reading a custom section in AppSettings in C#

I hope you can help me.
I'm supposed to add a new type of values to an AppSettings file (already existing with some values). Those values are a whole list of special folders so I thought the best way would be to have a new section for those folder values so that the file would look like this:for
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<appSettings>
<add key="usPath" value="folderName1" />
<add key="tcPath" value="folderName2" />
<add key="usGUID" value="folderID1" />
<add key="tcGUID" value="folderID2" />
</appSettings>
<updateFolders>
<add key="folderID3" value="folderName3">
<add key="folderID4" value="folderName4">
</updateFolders>
</configuration>
Reading and writing within the already existing appSettings-tag is no problem but I haven't find a way yet to modify the updateFolders section. I'm really new to using AppSettings in this way so I don't know too much about what's possible and what's not. In addition to that I think the AppSettings file might have been set up in a wrong way from the very beginning (it gets created by using a System.IO.File-Writer).

see ConfigurationManager.GetSection
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.configuration.configurationmanager.getsection(v=vs.110).aspx

Override config settings

I have a config file that is used in several projects, general.config, looks like:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<appSettings>
<add key="mykey1" value="myvalue1"/>
<add key="mykey2" value="myvalue2"/>
</appSettings>
In one of the projects, I need to override one of the two settings. So the app.config of this project looks like:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
<appSettings file="general.config">
<remove key="mykey1"/>
<add key="mykey1" value="anothervalue"/>
<add key="mykey3" value="myvalue3"/>
</appSettings>
</configuration>
But remove is not working here. How can I override mykey1 without breaking mykey2? add works in this case. I can get myvalue3 from ConfigurationManager.
EDIT: general.config is copied to output folder automatically when compiling. Don't worry about the path issue. Currently I got:
ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["mykey1"]
//I got "myvalue1", but I want "anothervalue" here
//that is, this item is "overrided", just like virtual methods in C#
ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["mykey2"]
//this setting will not be modified, currently it works fine
ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["mykey3"] //good

A friend of mine answered this question. From MSDN:
You can use the file attribute to
specify a configuration file that
provides additional settings or
overrides the settings that are
specified in the appSettings element.
You can use the file attribute in
source control team development
scenarios, such as when a user wants
to override the project settings that
are specified in an application
configuration file. Configuration
files that are specified in a file
attribute must have the appSettings
element rather than configuration
element as the root node.
So in this question, the settings in general.config overrides items in app.config, different from that I think(want) app.config items overrides items in general.config. Now I think I have to resolve this issue in C# code(it will inevitable looks ugly).

Your use of the file attribute to load common settings with an expectation that keys added directly to the <appSettings> element would override those common settings is understandable, but unfortunately that is not how it works.
Microsoft's intention was for the file attribute to load common settings that override the individual application's settings.
This is discussed in some detail in the Microsoft Documentation
To overcome this problem, we very occasionally declare base settings in the common file, and then appropriately named overrides in the application configuration. However this does require additional code which is a bit ugly. e.g.
var config = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MSG_QUEUE_PROVIDER_OVERRIDE"]
?? ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MSG_QUEUE_PROVIDER"]
?? "ActiveMQ";
<appSettings file="common.config">
<!-- Override the common values -->
<add key="MSG_QUEUE_PROVIDER_OVERRIDE" value="RabbitMQ"/>
</appSettings>

The elements are changed from the child and what i mean by that is currently your app.config is the parent file and the values are replaced by the ones existing in General.config
Since you are using remove in the parent file what its effectively doing is removing the element you specify in app.config but after that the elements from general.config are pushed in. Now say here in General.config you say remove mykey3 which is on your app.config you will see that the final collection has no key as mykey3.
In short this is not going to work. Hope this helped you.

You can add another config file say Test.config.
<appSettings>
<add key="mykey1" value="New value"/>
</appSettings>
and in the app.config appsettings section will look like this
<appSettings file="Test.config">
<add key="mykey1" value="myvalue1"/>
</appSettings>

Using one app setting variable definition in another app setting variable

Is there a way to use one app setting variable definition in another app setting variable?
This is an example, right now I have:
<add key="P4RootDirectory" value="d:\p4\" />
<add key="P4LocalBranchSyncDirectory" value="d:\p4\sw\matt\" />
Ideally, I would like to have something like this
<add key="P4RootDirectory" value="d:\p4\" />
<add key="P4LocalBranchSyncDirectory" value="%P4RootDirectory%sw\matt\" />
Is this not possible? Would I have to do this in my code?

You will need to do this in code. If you use a DI injection framework that would be a great place to setup and automatically do the replace before injecting the final string into some constructor for example.