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>
Related
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
I have about 10 methods in my class. In every method I use ConfigurationManager.AppSettings to get value form App.config file
like
_applicationPort = int.Parse(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ApplicationPort"]
My problem is that I want to make this code get AppSettings from another app.config file like AnotherPoject.exe.config.
You can also set the app.config to read another file. Something like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
<appSettings file="my\custom\file\path\external.config"/>
</configuration>
and the external.config will have the appSettings section:
<appSettings>
<add key="myKey" value="myValue" />
</appSettings>
refer to this msdn for additional info.
You could do something like this
var fileConfig = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration("<filePath>");
int port = int.Parse(fileConfig.AppSettings["PortNumber"].ToString());
You can accomplish this by using ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration. This will allow you to open another configuration file easily.
MSDN article about OpenExeConfiguration.
I am trying to create a simple tool for a service person to update a few entries in the App.Config of a different program. The App.Config file contains custom parameters used upon initialization of our program.
Since the App.Config contains many sensitive items a tool is needed to ensure only certain parameters are changed. Thus, the reason not to allow them to edit the App.Config directly.
My questions:
How can I access the name-value pairs from the config sections of an App.config from a separate program?
Which is better suited for the UI: Winforms or WPF? Are their controls that make it easy to add more entries in the future?
The tool should allow the user to set either a String, int, double or Boolean.
Here is the structure of the App.Config:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<configSections>
<sectionGroup name="Settings">
<section name="Section1" type="System.Configuration.NameValueSectionHandler"/>
<section name="Section2" type="System.Configuration.NameValueSectionHandler"/>
<section name="Section3" type="System.Configuration.NameValueSectionHandler"/>
<section name="Section4" type="System.Configuration.NameValueSectionHandler"/>
</sectionGroup>
</configSections>
<Settings>
<Section1>
<add key="NAME_STRING" value="Some String"/>
</Section1>
<Section2>
<add key="NAME_INTEGER" value="10"/>
</Section2>
<Section3>
<add key="NAME_DOUBLE" value="10.5"/>
</Section3>
<Section4>
<add key="NAME_BOOLEAN" value="true"/>
</Section4>
</Settings>
... Omitted ...
</configuration>
In the program which uses the App.Config itself, I can easily change the values like so:
NameValueCollection nvc = (NameValueCollection)ConfigurationManager.GetSection("Settings/Section1");
Is there a similar way to do this from a separate program after loading the App.Config?
An answer to Question 1: An app.config file is an XML file. It might be easiest to load it as an XML document and modify that programmatically, followed by a save, than to use System.Configuration classes.
ETA: I believe it can be done with ConfigurationManager. Look at the OpenMappedExeConfiguration method. There's a good example there.
You could treat the app.config file as a normal XML file. Use either XDocument or XmlDocument to load the file.
Then use XPath or Linq to XML to find the name-value pairs.
As for Windows.Forms vs. WPF, its a design decision. Both have good and bad points.
[Update]
If you still want to use System.Configuration, you can use the ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration to get access to the other program's app.config file. This returns a Configuration object, which has a GetSection method.
Is it possible to add an custom configuration element at runtime.
Here is my app.config file
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<configSections>
<section name="NodeList"
type="Configuration.NodeListSection, NodeListConfiguration"
requirePermission="false" />
</configSections>
<NodeList>
<nodes>
<add name="Dev1" isdefault="false" description ="Dev server" />
<add name="QA1" isdefault="true" description="QA server"/>
<add name="Prod1" isdefault="false" description="Production" />
</nodes>
</NodeList>
</configuration>
Can we add more nodes at runtime using C# code.
This doesn't appear to be from a built-in configuration section. You will find that "NodesList" is an section/element that is custom written. To determine where in your codebase it is coming from look for "NodesList" at the top of your config file in the configSections element. That will point you at the class to look into.
After that, you need the class to support write operations properly.
To learn a lot more about customising configuration files there is a great series at CodeProject on the topic. In particular, the section on Saving Configuration Changes should be helpful to you.
Edit (after more info added to question):
Try something like (of course it all depends on what's in NodeListSection codebase):
using Configuration;
var nodeListSection = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("NodeList") as Configuration.NodeListSection;
var newNode = new NodeElement() { Name = "xyz", IsDefault = false, Description = "New Guy" };
nodeListSection.Nodes.Add(newNode);
Configuration.Save(ConfigurationSaveMode.Modified);
The file you have posted does not look like a normal .NET config file, but a custom XML file.
In either case - .config files are just XML files - you can open, manipulate and save them using any of the XML libraries within the BCL, such as XDocument.
However, if you want to make changes to configuration during runtime, you will need to decide whether the application should apply these changes at runtime as well and code for this, as normally a configuration file will only be read at startup.
private void AddNewKey_Config(string key, string value, string fileName)
{
var configFile = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(fileName);
configFile.AppSettings.Settings.Add(key, value);
configFile.Save();
}
Is there a way to create some optional fields in application settings. For example for one client we need some client based settings in the settings file, something like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
<configSections>
<userSettings>
<setting name="Client_1_out_folder" serializeAs="String">
<value>c:\</value>
</setting>
<setting name="Some_other_setting" serializeAs="String">
<value>True</value>
</setting>
...
And for the other client we dont need the Client_1_out_folder at all so to keep the config file clean would be nice to remove it from the config file all together. So for client 2 that part of config file would look like:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
<configSections>
<userSettings>
<setting name="Some_other_setting" serializeAs="String">
<value>True</value>
</setting>
...
Create a custon configuration section for your settings. Then on the configurationsection class, mark the property as "IsRequired=false" to make that property optional.
[ConfigurationProperty("frontPagePostCount"
, DefaultValue = 20
, IsRequired = false)]
You can create a class which inherits from ConfigurationSection.
Then, you can do practically whatever you want. It's much more powerful than the user settings.
MSDN: How to: Create Custom Configuration Sections Using ConfigurationSection
You can extend ASP.NET configuration
settings with XML configuration
elements of your own. To do this, you
create a custom configuration section
handler. The handler must be a .NET
Framework class that inherits from the
System.Configuration.ConfigurationSection
class. The section handler interprets
and processes the settings that are
defined in XML configuration elements
in a specific section of a Web.config
file. You can read and write these
settings through the handler's
properties.
The article says "ASP.NET", but it's not just for ASP.NET. It works equally well for WinForms.
I recommend creating your own configuration sections with Configuration Section Designer.
Unfortunately this tool isn't compatible with VS2010 but it is so very helpful that I keep using VS2008 to use it. Either way you create an extra assembly for the configuration section handler so you can use VS2008 only for this assembly and build the rest of the solution with VS2010. So this isn't a huge drawback at all.
There is also a good sample about create a custom configuration sections.
I hope it can help you...
app-config-and-custom-configuration-sections
Put those common settings in a .config file, and refer it in a special config file.
<!-- in general.config -->
<appSettings>
<add key="common1" value="something"/>
<add key="common2" value="something else"/>
</appSettings>
<!-- in client1.config -->
<appSettings file="general.config" >
<add key="specialKey1" value="for client 1 only"/>
</appSettings>
<!-- in client2.config -->
<appSettings file="general.config" >
<add key="specialKey2" value="for client 2 only"/>
</appSettings>
The use of custom configuration sections is a good idea, and you can then code for the entry to be required. That is a nice and clean way to handle this problem.
However, you could also handle this by a class that picks up these details, and tests for the existence ( or otherwise ) of this, having them all still in the usersettings section. So your main code would access the setting from the class:
if(Settings.HasClient)
//use Settings.Client;
Process(Settings.OtherSetting);
Depending on how you need to use them. Within Settings Constructor, you would access the settings directly.
I suspect there is something missing from your question.
If client 2 does not require the "Client_1_out_folder" setting and does not try and retrieve it at run time, you should be able to simply remove it, without having to make any other changes.
Have you tried doing so?