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Asp.net: How to Read Application Settings from the Web.config File at Runtime

This example reads an application setting identified by the key customsetting1 from a Web.config file. The appSettings element is a NameValueCollection collection of strings. Working with collection elements can be slightly more complicated than working with other configuration elements.

To obtain configuration settings for the root-level Web configuration, null is passed to the OpenWebConfiguration method.

To update a configuration setting, use the Save or SaveAs method of the configuration object. For more information, see Using the Configuration Classes. For additional code examples, see the AppSettingsSection class and related classes.

This example uses the non-static method of obtaining configuration data, which allows you to pull configuration data from any application. If you are going to obtain configuration information from the application in which your code resides, use the static method, which processes faster. For more information, see the Working with Local and Remote Configuration Settings section in ASP.NET Configuration API Overview.

Example:

C#:
System.Configuration.Configuration rootWebConfig1 = System.Web.Configuration.WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration(null);
if (rootWebConfig1.AppSettings.Settings.Count > 0)
{
System.Configuration.KeyValueConfigurationElement customSetting = rootWebConfig1.AppSettings.Settings[“customsetting1”];

if (customSetting != null)
Console.WriteLine(“customsetting1 application string = \”{0}\””, customSetting.Value);
else
Console.WriteLine(“No customsetting1 application string”);
}

VB.Net:
Dim rootWebConfig1 As System.Configuration.Configuration
rootWebConfig1 = System.Web.Configuration.WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration(Nothing)
If (rootWebConfig1.AppSettings.Settings.Count > 0) Then
Dim customSetting As System.Configuration.KeyValueConfigurationElement
customSetting = rootWebConfig1.AppSettings.Settings(“customsetting1”)
If Not (customSetting.Value = Nothing) Then
Console.WriteLine(“customsetting1 application string = {0}”, customSetting.Value)
Else
Console.WriteLine(“No customsetting1 application string”)
End If
End If

Robust Programming
Values read from the appSettings element of the Web.config file are always of type String. If the specified key does not exist in the Web.config file, no error occurs. Instead, an empty string is returned.

Security
The configuration file should be protected on the server by using Windows security settings to limit who can read the file. Avoid storing sensitive information such as user credentials in the appSettings element of the Web.config file. Also consider encrypting configuration settings.

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Asp.net Difference between appSettings and Connection Strings in web.config

In previous versions of ASP.NET, connection strings were stored in the appSettings. In ASP.NET 2.0, features, such as Session, Membership, Personalization, and Role Manager, rely on connection strings that are stored in the connectionStrings element. You can also use the connectionStrings element to store connection strings for your own applications.

The difference is that the connectionString section gives you strongly typed access to your connection strings through the ConfigurationManager class. It’s meant for connection strings specifically. The connectionStrings element specifies a collection of database connection strings, as name/value pairs, for ASP.NET applications and features.

A connectionString object is an XML node that has specific attributes to set; and semantically it refers to a database connection string.

Example:
<connectionStrings>
<clear/>
<add name=”LocalSqlServer” connectionString=”Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=(DBName);Integrated Security=True” providerName=”System.Data.SqlClient” />
</connectionStrings>

You’ll notice it has a few different attributes:

  • name
  • connectionString : This has a specific string inside of it, it needs an Initial Catalog, a security mechanism (in this case Integrated Security
  • providerName

AppSettings is meant to store general settings in web.config is used to store server names, file paths, and other miscellaneous settings needed by an application.. You can use it to store connection strings also, but I recommend not doing that since there is a specific element for it in connectionStrings.

appSettings is just a user-defined Key-value pair that allows you to… well… set application settings.

It can be anything:

Example:
<appSettings>
<add key=”Email” value=”abc@abc.com”/>
<add key=”MasterKey” value=”True”/>
<add key=”GoogleAPI” value=”1234567890-AA”/>
</appSettings>

In many cases, it would just be odd to put the connectionString in a key-value pair like appSettings (semantically and programmatically). As well as it would make it more difficult to encrypt the connectionString when you need to.

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XML – Rules of XML serialization

  1. XML Serialization serializes the public fields and properties of a class, or the parameters and return values of methods into an XML stream.
  2. XML Serialization does not include methods, indexers, private fields, or read-only properties (except read-only collections). Because XML is an open standard, the resulting XML stream can be processed by any application on any platform. For example: ASP.NET Web Services use XML Serialization to create XML streams to pass as data throughout the Internet or Intranets. Conversely, deserialization takes such streams and constructs an object.
  3. The following items can be serialized using XmlSerialzer:
    • Public read/write properties.
    • Public fields.
    • Classes that implement ICollection or IEnumerable.
    • XmlElement objects.
    • XmlNode objects.
    • DataSet objects.
  4. XmlSerialzer gives complete control over serializing an object into XML. For example, XmlSerialzer enables you to:
    • Specify whether a field or a property should be encoded as an element or as an attribute.
    • Specify which XML namespace to use.
    • Specify the name of an element or attribute if a field / property name is inappropriate.

XML Serialization Considerations

Following should be considered when using XmlSerialzer class:

  1. Type identity and assembly information is not included. In other words, XML serialization does not maintain type fidelity. To maintain type fidelity use binary serialization instead.
  2. Only public properties and fields can be serialized. To serialize non-public data use binary serialization instead.
  3. A class must have a default constructor to be serialized with the XmlSerialzer class.
  4. Methods cannot be serialized.
  5. XmlSerialzer class can serialize classes that implement IColleciton and IEnumerable differently if they meet certain requirements.
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