I have written an application in C# with a settings file (which is used to create an app.config file at compile time). This application uses a C# DLL which also has a settings file.
I read the following from this post:
If you build a project that references your DLL, you would add the same .settings file to that project and those settings would appear in the app.config file for the app and the DLL would be able to read those values. IF those values aren't in the app.config, the dll will fall back on the defaults.
I observed the DLL storing default values as this indicates it should. I right clicked on my application's project and selected Add Existing Item. Then I found the settings file from my DLL's project and added it to the application's project. My hope was that both the DLL settings file and the application settings file would be included in the application's app.config file. This way, the application's app.config file would override the defaults stored in the DLL. Unfortunately, this isn't happening.
So, my question is after adding the settings from the DLL project to the application project, how do I make the application project recognize the file and add its settings to the app.config file at compile time?
I'm unsure what you mean. Have you tried including it in a similar way to the following?
<appSettings file="dataSettings.config"/>
Related
I've got a solution with a project layout of:
View (Startup project, app.config)
Settings (ApplicationSettings.Settings, app.config)
There in an ApplicationSettings.Settings file inside of the settings project which contains various user settings. This project also has an App.config file. This config file is mostly empty.
Now it's my understanding that the userSettings will load from the startup project config file in the output folder. Aka View.exe.config. This file (and the View app.config) contains my wanted startup user settings.
However after trying to get this working I can only get the View.exe.config changes to be loaded if the ApplicationSettings.Settings file is placed in the View project. And in no scenario is anything loaded from the Settings App.Config.
I'm aware these files are replaced when you rebuild and debug and that's not the issue. I also know that when you save the values are saved into your appData folder and there is nothing saved in there at this time.
Basically my question is can you have a settings file outside of the startup project which loads from a .config file when you run?
You need to do following things here.
Make sure that settings file get copied from other project to startup project when project builds. You can achieve this by using post build script.
Write config section or handler to read settings value from the settings file.
Configure config section handler in app.config and add config section with config source path pointing to relative path to the settings file in startup project.
I have integrated a dll with a service(exe). The dll has its own app.config file. But the code inside the dll for any Key/Value reference, it always refers to the exe's config file instead of the dll's config file. How the make the dll's config file as current to be used only when referred from inside the dll's code?
A DLL (or library file) cannot have its own config file. It will ALWAYS use the "hosting" applications configuration files.
The whole point of a DLL is that is can be used by many different applications and does not have configuration itself. Instead its "host" will contain the configuration information, so this is "by design".
When your solution contains more than one project, you can add app.config in any of the project; but when you compile the code to generate final output, you get only one configuration file named <exeFileName>.exe.config . This is the only configuration file that will be read by the WinForms framework when the application is running.
If your DLLs (Assemblies in .NET) specify their own configuration file, those config files will not become a part of the final output (the respective assemblies).
To include the settings from the project specific config files, you will have to make those configuration entries (appSettings, connectionString, etc) into the main application's configuration file.
The DLLs can also read from the configuration file of the main application. Hence, when you make those entries in the <exeFileName>.exe.config file, all the DLLs, that are loaded can read values from the file.
Note: Take care of using unique names for the keys for each DLL as the configuration values are read using the keys.
I have a solution with the following setup:
X amount of class library projects
Y amount of console application projects
Each of these projects may have 0 or more configuration parameters.
Now, I'd like to have only one App.config for user to specify settings and that App.config will only contain parameters of all the reference projects of the console application project to be run.
I've tried giving each project a Settings file and then linking them to the console applications according to their dependencies but that didn't work.
I've also tried just lumping all the configurations together in one class library project and have each console application link to that app.config (or settings file). But that also didn't work (i.e. changes of the app.config or the settings file in the class library will not update the .config of the executable)
Is what I am trying to do possible?
Yes, it is possible. You just need to open the app file. Follow the next example:
ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration("C:\Test\SomeProject.dll");
XmlNode loggingConfigNode = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("log4net") as XmlNode;
I guess that you will have to open each setting file in order to use the settings, or you will have to consolidate all the settings in a single app.config and then your applications can access the file by open it.
I'm a bit lost!
I have a dll that uses an xml config file for some db connection info. The dll looks for the xml config file in it's own directory and I can't change the dll at all.
Every time I build the project, I must manually copy the config file into a folder way down somewhere in the Temporary ASP.NET Files folder. (I don't understand this but I can live with this manual change)
The problem is that when I publish the project, I can't figure out where to copy the config file to?
Could someone please point me in the right direction? Or maybe show me a way that I can 'bind' the xml config file to the bin folder???
Vauneen
The .NET config file can be confusing to manage. The way it works in a webapp is that the Web.config will supersede any dependencies' app.config files (which is what I assume you're talking about when you say "DLL".)
Basically, in .NET all config info is pulled from the main app project.
See:
App.config seems to be ignored
and
Configuration from App.config isn't being pulled correctly
and finally:
Does a web.config substitute app.config?
will probably help you figure out what you need to know.
Update: Doing some further searching on your problem, it's possible that the code you're incorporating into the .Net Solution is using the "obsolete" ConfigurationSettings which will require you to add a reference to System.Configuration in your references folder (right-click on the project -> "Add References" and go to the .NET tab and select System.Configuration).
Set "Copy to Output Directory" to "Copy always" in properties of the configuration. Then Visual Studio will copy the configuration file automatically after each build and it will be properly published as well.
I have a Windows application developed using Visual Studio 2008 (C#).
It has a app.config file, where various configuration related information are kept. After creating an installer for the project and installing it, there are no app.config file being copied to the installed directory. However, the functionalities that rely on settings in this file seem to work.
Now one of these settings is a database connection string, which obviously needs changing when installed in a different PC. My question is, how to have the app.config file available with the Setup file so that it can be configured later?
The app.config is copied/renamed <assembly name>.config as part of the compilation process, and placed in the bin directory. If you're using a Visual Studio Installer project (blech!), then it should have picked it up also and included it in the installer, IIRC.
(In response to your comment to both answers)
You can't keep using it as "app.config". The .NET config system searches for the configuration file whose name is the same as the entry assembly. If you renamed the file back to "app.config", then the configuration classes would stop working.
Your app.config file gets renamed on compilation, with the name of the binary. I.e. if your binary is myapp.exe then your app.config will be renamed to either myapp.config or myapp.exe.config.
This is the file that you should add to the setup package in order to use it on deployment for configuration.