Configuration files containing environment specific settings
We have multiple environments in my organization (Dev, QA, Stage, Prod, Disaster Recovery) and I would like my app / web.config files to not contain any environment specific details in URIs, connection strings, etc. My preferred approach would be to do the substitution at runtime, like instead:
<endpoint address="http://MyDevWebServer/SomeService" binding="basicHttpBinding"...
I would rather have something like this:
<endpoint address="http://{Env:WebServerName}/SomeService" binding="basicHttpBinding"...
It's just for the config settings read from the classes I manage (just put in a wrapper that replaces {Env: WebServerName} with the actual server name for that environment), but I also want this replacement to be done when the settings are read from classes I have no control over (e.g. WCF, NHibernate, etc.). Does anyone know a way to inject such replacement logic. I imagine an AOP approach might be possible, but personally don't have much experience with AOP frameworks.
You should do this by inferring a custom class from ApplicationSettingsBase that provides this replacement.
I recommend reading up on Application Settings Architecture . It walks you through the process of creating your own customization architecture, including setting up your own handler that can read from any source or do other work in the process.
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One approach is to use ConfigSource for the configuration section (appSettings, connectionStrings, etc.). See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.configuration.sectioninformation.configsource.aspx for details . Thus, web / app.config can contain basic information, and unique environment settings can be set in the file for that environment.
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We have a post-build nant script that uses XPath to define and replace environment-specific values depending on which environment we are targeting. All configuration values for the development environment are default. This adds a short delay to the build process, but has proven to be a very reliable solution in practice, i.e. no confused or crossed environment settings.
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I agree that such a replacement would be desirable and requested this feature from Microsoft Connect .
Not much interest from Microsoft though :(
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While you are trying to find a way to do the runtime replacement, I would guess that in this case it would be a better solution to replace the build time. For example, we use nant task xmlpoke to replace config values at build time. You can also try replacing the web.config section in web deployment projects or the XmlMassUpdate Task from MSBuild Community Tasks ( example ).
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