Unlock section in applicationHost.config programmatically

Question

I have checked ServerManagaer class and it gives a lot of functionality to work with IIS, it also contains methods to update values in applicationHost.config file, but I can't fine any way to unlock sections there.

For example for that purpose appcmd.exe unlock config command is used. I need to do the same programmatically.

Answer 1

To my knowledge you can't perform lock/unlock action using ServerManager but still you can execute appcmd.exe programatically to achieve the desired result:

System.Diagnostics.Process appCmdProc = new System.Diagnostics.Process();
appCmdProc.StartInfo.FileName = "Path-to-Directory\appcmd.exe";
appCmdProc.StartInfo.Arguments = "unlock config /section:sectionName";
appCmdProc.Start();

Answer 2

As already said you can run appcmd process. But just a hint that if you don't console to popup you can redirect the output.

Here is the code from MSDN

// Start the child process.
 Process p = new Process();
 // Redirect the output stream of the child process.
 p.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
 p.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
 p.StartInfo.FileName = "Write500Lines.exe";
 p.Start();
 // Do not wait for the child process to exit before
 // reading to the end of its redirected stream.
 // p.WaitForExit();
 // Read the output stream first and then wait.
 string output = p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
 p.WaitForExit(); 

More details see HERE