Storing public key in web.config file

Question

I am trying to store a public key in the web.config file of an ASP.NET website as follows:

<add key="public_key" value="<RSAKeyValue><Modulus>zDYX4tbHSyTrwDmjSXiiFTo0ydGK50zxtH2lGL90oWrshMGy16wod7AZMfm8CMd/Rxl3ocIPLTmHSwyBb0xzL6lnF8uJI90s2TBHYemx3tkRQCcW6PZfGBWwlwSzhaNidbibRtoWNImBG4ehzc5Yxg3r6IyUBEtY9xJkL1tIezU=</Modulus><Exponent>AQAB</Exponent></RSAKeyValue>"/>

This code is located inside the appSettings section of the web.config file. Unfortunately, it is giving me the following warning along with a number of other errors:

Warning 6   The element 'appSettings' has invalid child element 'RSAKeyValue'. List of possible elements expected: 'add, remove, clear'.

How can I solve this problem please? Thank you :)

Answer 1

You need to escape special characters ( < with < and > with > ) in this case, because in current state they turn web.config into invalid XML.

Here is the escaped string obtained here :

<RSAKeyValue><Modulus>zDYX4tbHSyTrwDmjSXiiFTo0ydGK50zxtH2lGL90oWrshMGy16wod7AZMfm8CMd/Rxl3ocIPLTmHSwyBb0xzL6lnF8uJI90s2TBHYemx3tkRQCcW6PZfGBWwlwSzhaNidbibRtoWNImBG4ehzc5Yxg3r6IyUBEtY9xJkL1tIezU=</Modulus><Exponent>AQAB</Exponent></RSAKeyValue>