I am trying to find a way to determine the location of the config file that holds a specific appsetting or connection string value. i.e. I have multiple web sites/apps on an IIS server and I would like to determine if a setting is coming from the app's config, the parent app's config or the machine.config.
Any idea?
TIA
J
There is no way to do that using System.Configuration because it was designed to be indiscriminate. If you must do what you are trying to do, you will want to manually parse the potential files, those being the app.config/web.config, application.exe.config, and machine.config.
Note: I see you are using .NET 4.0. Note that 4.0 uses application.exe.config instead of the older app.config or web.config, where application is your actual EXE file's name, to read its settings after the product has been installed through a setup.
Related
when building a desktop app in wpf can you read documentation of problems and safely subsititute 'app.config' when people's answer's refer to 'web.config'?
if so are there any glaring GOTCHAS you have to look out for?
tnx
Read the Documentation:
Web.config and App.config
The choice of the
configuration file name is determined by the hosting environment you
choose for the service. If you are using IIS to host your service, use
a Web.config file. If you are using any other hosting environment, use
an App.config file.
In Visual Studio, the file named App.config is used to create the
final configuration file. The final name actually used for the
configuration depends on the assembly name. For example, an assembly
named "Cohowinery.exe" has a final configuration file name of
"Cohowinery.exe.config". However, you only need to modify the
App.config file. Changes made to that file are automatically made to
the final application configuration file at compile time.
In using an App.config, file the configuration system merges the
App.config file with content of the Machine.config file when the
application starts and the configuration is applied. This mechanism
allows machine-wide settings to be defined in the Machine.config file.
The App.config file can be used to override the settings of the
Machine.config file; you can also lock in the settings in
Machine.config file so that they get used. In the Web.config case, the
configuration system merges the Web.config files in all directories
leading up to the application directory into the configuration that
gets applied.
Web.Config is used for asp.net web projects / web services.
App.Config is used for Windows Forms, Windows Services, Console Apps and WPF applications
Your question isn't providing all the information as to where the gotcha's may lie for you.
Can you give us more info on what you are trying to do in terms of these config files?
Here's a link...
Problems with Web.config and App.config
I'm trying to use application settings with a C#.NET project I am working on. But I can't seem to get it to return anything other then the default values. Through the project properties I've added a single setting, DBConnectionString, and set its value to a connection string I want to use. Its scope is set to "application".
Doing this created a number of files including Settings.settings, Settings.Designer.CS, and app.config. The Settings class then has custom, type safe, properties that can be used to set and retrieve each setting. The app.config file is a XML file that stores the actual settings values.
When I build my project it looks like the app.config file is copied to the target directory as DataAccessLayer.dll.config. My program runs fine and is able to use the default connection string.
Next I tried to edit the DataAccessLayer.dll.config file to change the connection string. I ran my program again, but it continued to use the default value.
This project is a class library that use to a Web project and sometimes the connection string can changes.
Builds will output config files named after the dll however those aren't actually what's read on app start up. You could put the setting in the web apps config (example here Equivalent to 'app.config' for a library (DLL)), those are the settings you'll actually be running with in this case.
If you want your library to be portable you'll have to either; 1) make your own config class/file 2) Read your dll's app config manually (example in the answer I linked to above) or 3) Put your setting in the importing projects app.config
In this case I would just put your connection string data in the web apps config. If DataAccessLayer.dll is only for internal use, this is in my experience the most common pattern, and doesn't really have many cons. Ultimately I would have these values set during my build or by a deploy utility like Salt or Chef. If you're manually editing the web apps config on or after deploy then you're doing it wrong.
Set & settings:
I use Entity Framework 5 and have a dll project with edmx file. In this project I have App.config with connection string for the EF model. I have also second project, ASP.MVC 4 web application which is a startup project. It references the database project. Important thing is - db is Oracle and EF uses Oracle custom providers.
Problem:
If I place my connection string in the ASP.MVC startup project is works fine. It's common advice to do this. But I don't want to. I don't see reason why I should. How can I force MVC/EF to find the connection string in App.config of the external library (which as a matter of fact is a data access layer)?
App.Config is used by WinForms, WPF and executable applications.
Web.Config is used in IIS (and is able to set IIS environment specific configurations)
It seems no App.Config will ever be merged to the Web.Config (source):
In using an App.config, file the configuration system merges the
App.config file with content of the Machine.config file when the
application starts and the configuration is applied. This mechanism
allows machine-wide settings to be defined in the Machine.config file.
The App.config file can be used to override the settings of the
Machine.config file; you can also lock in the settings in
Machine.config file so that they get used. In the Web.config case, the
configuration system merges the Web.config files in all directories
leading up to the application directory into the configuration that
gets applied. For more information about configuration and the setting
priorities, see topics in the System.Configuration namespace.
Perhaps you'll find a solution more appropriate to your needs by using Application Configuration Files.
Finally, after facing multiple issues, I've decided to move connection string of DAL into the Web.config of the web application. I was convinced by some arguments you can read here in the post of Chris Ammerman.
I am creating a windows service in .Net 4.0 and testing some functions of said service with a windows forms client by referencing the service project.
The service project has an App.config file and that file looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<connectionStrings>
<clear />
<add name="myLocalMySQLDBUsername" connectionString="username"/>
</connectionStrings>
</configuration>
When a function belonging to the service calls:
ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings("myLocalMySQLDBUsername").ConnectionString
a null reference error is thrown because my connection string is not loaded. The only connectionStrings that are loaded are from the machine.config file located in c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\Config\machine.config
If I create an application scope setting for the service, I can get that setting by using the My.Settings.setting -> so it's not like the App.config file is not being read.
My question is: why are my connectionStrings not being loaded from the App.config file?
Thank you for your help.
UPDATE:
Also, at this point, even a work around would be appreciated; the only reason for using app.config is to be able to encrypt the contents using the DpapiProtectedConfigurationProvider (the contents will have some username/password values for service and database connections).
I tried creating an AppSettings section manually in the app.config but those settings were also not read by the configurationManager (count = 0).
UPDATE 2:
Per a suggestion, I tried to manually open the app.config file like so:
Dim exePath As String = System.IO.Path.Combine(Environment.CurrentDirectory, "ServiceName.exe")
Dim myConfig As Configuration = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(exePath)
So here is the weird part, when I look inside, path is correct (points to my app.config) but the connectionStrings are still being loaded from the machine.config file (my connectionStrings are not loaded)!! ARGH
UPDATE 3:
Okay, so, I figured it out. When referencing a project(parent) from another project(child), the child's app.config is used even if the parent's classes are being used. Thus, I can get the connectionStrings to show up if I copy them over to the child's app.config. When trying to open it manually, my currentDirectory was of the child, not the parent (strange how it did not throw an exception - it wouldn't have been able to find the config file ... it just silently used the machine.config ... oh well).
Thanks all for the help!
The first thing you'll want to do is make sure that the service account has access to the file (if not running as SYSTEM). It sounds like it should be ok though since you mention My.Settings.Setting works.
The other thing to look out for is to make sure that the app.config has the name of the service executable in it - so if the service exe is MyService.exe the app.config must be named MyService.exe.config.
The last thing to make note of: libraries will read from the executable's app.config that loads the library, not the app.config that is with the library. So if you have a project for the service executable MyService and a project for the library MyServiceLibrary the code in the library will read the app.config from MyService not MyServiceLibrary.
I saw some people say this problem might be fixed by manually re-adding a reference to System.Configuration.dll
SIDE NOTE: If that really is you whole app.config file and not just a snippet then that is your problem... you're app.config file should be MUCH more complicated or .NET will not be able to load it.
WORK AROUND: Use the configuration manager to open this config file (there is an API for that.) You can't get it to load auto-magically just tell the config manager to open it.
I still think the problem is your config file is invalid -- could you please post the FULL file?
Make sure the config file is deployed to the same folder as the executable file, and that it's called your.assembly.exe.config.
I had a similar problem, but in my case it was because I had changed the project's namespace. This is also used as the application settings section element name in the config file, so the code was not finding the new section name. Fiddling with one of the custom setting's values in the project properties and rebuilding caused the new section to written into the app.config alongside the old ones which was what indicated the issue to me.
My ClickOnce app includes an app.config file, which the app does modify according to the user's preferences. It appears, though, that every time my clients get a new version of the app, the app.config file gets reset to its original state.
Is there any way to preserve the app.config file between ClickOnce updates?
The app.config is used to store application configurations. For user custom configurations you should be using a .settings file.
The only way I know to keep the user app config is to save a copy of the file before publishing and, post publishing, replace the
publish_dir/version_dir/app.config.deploy
with the copy.
I would separate the configuration settings from the application cache. We rolled our own class for storing and updating config values rather than use the built-in ones.
http://robindotnet.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/where-do-i-put-my-data-to-keep-it-safe-from-clickonce-updates/