How to set environment variables and use them in IIS application in Azure 2.5

Question

Currently i want my log files to be dropped in particular location. Is there a way that i can get the Environment variable for my IIS application in Global.asax.cs

private string GetLoggingPath()
        {
            string rootFolder = string.Empty;
            var directoryInfo = new DirectoryInfo(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/")).Parent;
            if (directoryInfo != null)
            {
                if (directoryInfo.Parent != null)
                {
                    rootFolder = directoryInfo.Parent.FullName;
                }
            }

            if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(rootFolder))
            {
                return Path.GetTempPath();
            }

            return Path.Combine(rootFolder, @"approot\bin\Data");
        }

I was looking into RoleRoot Environment variable but it is not available to me even when the application is running on Azure.

How can i set environment variables in azure so that i can use in my IIS application? What is the best way for me to get to the folder E:\\approot\\bin\\data without hardcoding where E:\\ is the roleroot folder

Answer 1

Don't have a great way, it seems that environment variable is not set in the w3wp.exe process, but how about just using the following:

System.IO.Path.Combine(
    System.IO.Path.GetPathRoot(
        System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment.ApplicationPhysicalPath
    ),
    @"approot\bin\Data"
); 

(pretty much the same as you, but without creating an DirectoryInfo).

Looking at the processes using Process Explorer I can see that only IISConfigurator.exe has the RoleRoot environment variable, so one option is you could use AppCmd.exe to set it in some configuration file during a startup task into a web.config or applicationHost.config and then read it from there.

But honestly I would just use the code above.