Exe does not work without application config file

Question

I have a very simple application which queries the database, gets the relevant data and displays it to the end users. I am using EntityFramework to query my database and I've got a connection string in the app.config file. Everything works perfectly fine. When I build the project and use the exe from the release directory it works as expected, however if I move the exe to another directory and try to run it I get an error message saying

No connection string named 'MyEntities' could be found in the application config file

So my question is do I have to include the app.config file with my application exe to whoever uses it or am I missing something?

Answer 1

When you build your application, app.config is copied to AppName.exe.config in the same directory as the executable AppName.exe .

This file needs to be copied along with your executable.

In general, you should copy all files from the output folder along with the executable. Such files may include referenced assemblies which will be needed to run the application.

Answer 2

If you don't want to expose this then you will have to encrypt the data or store the information elsewhere. Have a look at this for the encryption approach.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/89211k9b(VS.80).aspx