reading app settings as null from App.config

Question

I am struggeling reading data from a configuration file, and all the methods online are not working for me... I have this configuration file ( App.config ):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
    <appSettings>
        <add key="test" value="testVal"/>
    </appSettings>
</configuration>

And this line in my C# code

string appSettings = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["test"];

for some reason, appSettings remains null when expected to be testVal.

Answer 1

This should work. Put a break point right after that and check the value. I tested same code and getting the value. If you use web application make sure you put this in web.config and not in the app.config