Can you help me making my custom section with elementCollection work?

Question

I want to create a custom config section that will handle a webcfg like this

<reports>
     <report name="abc">
       <query name="que">
         <parameter name="def" value="asd" type="string"> </parameter>
          <parameter name="par" value="123" type="int"> </parameter>
       </query>
     </report>
     <report name="abc">
       <query name="que">
         <parameter name="def" value="asd" type="string"> </parameter>
          <parameter name="par" value="123" type="int"> </parameter>
       </query>
     </report>
</reports> 

Where "reports" may have many "report" tags and "query" may have many "parameter" tags. Everything else is should be present only once.

So I created the following class structure:

• ReportSection
• ReportElementCollection
• ReportElement
• QueryElement
• ParameterElementCollection
• ParameterElement

Here is the code:

Report Section:

public class ReportSection : ConfigurationSection
{
    // Create a "report" element.
    [ConfigurationProperty("", IsRequired = true, IsDefaultCollection = true)]
    [ConfigurationCollection(typeof(ReportElementCollection), AddItemName = "report")]
    public ReportElementCollection Instances
    {
        get
        {
            return (ReportElementCollection)this[""];
        }
    }

    public List<Report> GetAllValues()
    {
        List<Report> reports = new List<Report>();

        foreach (ReportElement tags in (ReportElementCollection)this[""])
        {
            Report r = new Report(tags.Name, tags.Query.Name);//, tags.Query.Parameters);
            //reports.Add(
            reports.Add(r);
        }

        return reports;
    }
}

ReportElementCollection:

public class ReportElementCollection : ConfigurationElementCollection
{
    protected override ConfigurationElement CreateNewElement()
    {
        return new ReportElement();
    }

    protected override object GetElementKey(ConfigurationElement element)
    {
        //set to whatever Element Property you want to use for a key
        return ((ReportElement)element).Name;
    }
} 

ReportElement:

public class ReportElement : ConfigurationElement
{
    [ConfigurationProperty("name", IsRequired = true)]
    public String Name
    {
        get
        {
            return (String)this["name"];
        }
        set
        {
            this["name"] = value;
        }
    }
    // Create a "query" element.
    [ConfigurationProperty("query", IsRequired=true)]
    public QueryElement Query
    {
        get
        {
            return (QueryElement)this["query"];
        }
        set
        { this["query"] = value; }
    }
}

QueryElement:

public class QueryElement : ConfigurationElement
    {
        [ConfigurationProperty("name", IsRequired = true)]
        public String Name
        {
            get
            {
                return (String)this["name"];
            }
            set
            {
                this["name"] = value;
            }
        }
        // Create a "parameter" element.
        [ConfigurationProperty("", IsDefaultCollection = true, IsRequired = true)]
        public ParameterElementCollection Parameter
        {
            get
            {
                return (ParameterElementCollection)this[""];
            }
        }
    }

ParameterElementCollection:

public class ParameterElementCollection : ConfigurationElementCollection
    {
        protected override ConfigurationElement CreateNewElement()
        {
            return new ParameterElement();
        }

        protected override object GetElementKey(ConfigurationElement element)
        {
            //set to whatever Element Property you want to use for a key
            return ((ParameterElement)element).Name;
        }
    } 

ParameterElement

public class ParameterElement : ConfigurationElement
    {
        [ConfigurationProperty("name", IsRequired = true)]
        public String Name
        {
            get
            {
                return (String)this["name"];
            }
            set
            {
                this["name"] = value;
            }
        }

        [ConfigurationProperty("value", IsRequired = true)]
        public String Value
        {
            get
            {
                return (String)this["value"];
            }
            set
            {
                this["value"] = value;
            }
        }

        [ConfigurationProperty("type", IsRequired = true)]
        public String Type
        {
            get
            {
                return (String)this["type"];
            }
            set
            {
                this["type"] = value;
            }
        }
    }

The problem is that when the program tries to load my custom section, it runs until QueryElement.Parameter, this[""] has count=0. After it exits the method, I get the following error message:

Unrecognized element 'parameter'.

I am reading many different resources, but they all seem to match my code. I think I am missing something very tinny. Do you know what?

Answer 1

My webconfig was incorrect, the correct would be

<query name="que">
         <parameter>
          <add name="def" value="asd" type="string">
          <add name="par" value="123" type="int"> 
        </parameter>
</query>

instead of

<query name="que">
         <parameter name="def" value="asd" type="string"> </parameter>
          <parameter name="par" value="123" type="int"> </parameter>
       </query>