Modifying Root Web.config in code

Question

I would like to store some meta-information about a given site instance that can (a) be managed by that site instance and (b) persist clobbering of Web.config file. The site will run in multiple environments (dev,testing,staging and production) and each environment can have different values for this metadata. Note: All environments are running IIS 7.0+

The Root Web.config seems very appealing, as it is certainly outside of the website. Therefore, both files and databases can be changed while maintaining the metadata. I have seen how to modify the appSettings of the Web.config stored in the website, but is it possible to similarly modify the appSettings in the Root Web.config (Specifically within the proper directive)?

If you have other suggestions of approaching this problem, I would be very happy to hear them. Thank you!

Answer 1

Yes you can modufy the app settings within your web.config Just use the WebConfigurationManager class in the System.Web.Configuration namespace to create a Configuration object. This object could then be used to read and write changes to the web.config file.

You could then create your own "keys" or attributes that could be read as needed.

Depending upon what your attributes represent or if they need to be picked up by multiple environmnets from that server I would also look into making the modifications within the machine.config file as then those settings would apply to the enter machine and thereby picked up by multiple environments( if you are hosting multiple webapps from the server). This could save you time in modifying multiple web.config files and narrorw the storage or the metadata to one location vs. multiple config files in certain situations.

Answer 2

would not use web.config for runtime modifications, that will cause the application to recycle, perhaps some other form of configuration file like app.config

if my assumption is incorrect and the web.config will not be edited after the application is started, then you can use WebConfigurationManager to access the file sections