Edit app config file net

After creating your installation project, add the primary output from your project into a custom action for the install process:. It is important to override the Install method in order to get a reference to your application.

If the install directory is not specified, then Application. The complete code is attached. The App. An application configuration file contains settings that are specific to an app.

This file includes configuration settings that the common language runtime reads such as assembly binding policy, remoting objects, and so on , and settings that the app can read.

The name and location of the application configuration file depend on the app's host, which can be one of the following:. These apps have two configuration files: a source configuration file, which is modified by the developer during development, and an output file that is distributed with the app. When you develop in Visual Studio, place the source configuration file for your app in the project directory and set its Copy To Output Directory property to Copy always or Copy if newer.

The name of the configuration file is the name of the app with a. For example, an app called myApp. Visual Studio automatically copies the source configuration file to the directory where the compiled assembly is placed to create the output configuration file, which is deployed with the app. In some cases, Visual Studio may modify the output configuration file; for more information, see the Redirecting assembly versions at the app level section of the Redirecting Assembly Versions article.

For more information about ASP. NET Configuration Settings. In this tag, location is a URL to the configuration file. This sets the app base. The configuration file must be located on the same website as the app.

Security configuration files contain information about the code group hierarchy and permission sets associated with a policy level. Starting with the. NET Framework 4, the security configuration files are present only if security policy has been changed. Redirecting Assembly Versions Describes how to specify the location of an assembly and which version of an assembly to use. The assemblyBinding tag is another tag you will encounter easily.

In short, it allows you to point to a certain version of an assembly, even when a different version is required. Again, this is out of the scope of this article, but the documentation should help you further.

Another example is the system. Good, by now you know what the app. Now you might be wondering what happens behind the scenes. Well, when you compile your application, the compiler actually copies the app. When you start your application ConsoleApp1. It is possible to change this file while the application is running, but you will need to restart the application for the changes to take effect.

Luckily, there are ways around this:. Keep in mind that a new compilation or deployment can overwrite the changed values. You should consider not putting confidential information in your config files. Things like passwords and API keys should be kept out of the app. In an age where more and more code is made open source, you could risk exposing your secrets to the outside world.

But second, you never know when your private repository may become public, on purpose or by accident. See how both the appSettings and the connectionStrings point to another file? Also note that we can combine an external file with appSettings, but for connectionStrings we need to choose.

Another thing to remember is to tell the compiler to copy these files to the output directory:. This article aimed at showing you the basics of the app. You can change it easily, the. NET Framework supports it out of the box and almost all. NET developers know how it works.

Learn more how CodeIt. Right can help you automate code reviews and improve the quality of your code. Peter Morlion is a passionate programmer that helps people and companies improve the quality of their code, especially in legacy codebases.? He firmly believes that industry best-practices are invaluable when working towards this goal. Very helpful article — thank you! Or must you manually edit the app. Config file for that? Within code we can then access them […].

Peter, how are the secrets kept from prying eyes, if the app. You have to think for this, and when you did, you usually consider you real-case scenario, that was having a deveolpment set of configuration often a database connection and a production configuration often just placeholders for connection parameters.

You have to resort to solutions that, as you can see on the internet range from visual studio extensions to custom transfomrations to batch files to replace the app. This is the major problem that i would like to be discussed. XML sucks. And now like free radicals it creeps in every piece of software and corrupts it. Microsoft what are you waiting for? Space is no problem since we are living in a terabyte world and it compressed to virtually the same size. Schema validation sucks. This tightly binds producers and consumers.

Compression is just a Bandaid. Most studies agree that this choice has a significant processing cost everywhere.