How to deal with constants?

[Steve]

Running asp.net 2.0

I have never used global constants and I am a bit confused on the
subject.

I want to give the admin of an application a lot of control over
display.

i.e. custom error messages, number of rows displayed, etc.

Assuming that all these 'constants' are stored in a database table,
what is the best way of incorporating them into the application?

Should I used global.asax, i.e. make a call to the database, loop
through the values and declare them as constants? If so, can somebody
give me a few lines of code as an example? Are there any better ways?

 

[Edwin Knoppert]

Contants IN DB ???
Nahh.

Just create a class like class1
Public Const Hello As String = "hello"

then access it through: class1.Hello
No need to create a class instance.

Public functions:
Public Shared Function....
No need to create a class instance.

 

[Mark Rae]

Assuming that all these 'constants' are stored in a database table,
what is the best way of incorporating them into the application?

How "constant" are they? Do they change never, occasionally, sometimes,
quite often, all the time...?

Should I used global.asax, i.e. make a call to the database, loop
through the values and declare them as constants? If so, can somebody
give me a few lines of code as an example? Are there any better ways?

Whenever I have a smallish amount of static data which is accessed lots of
times in the web app, I tend to read it into a Hashtable in the
Application_Start event and thereafter read it from there rather than
constantly querying the database for the same piece of data over and over
again.

A good example of this are countries and currencies. They hardly ever
change, so it doesn't make sense to keep looking them up...

 

[Paul Gielens]

Hi Steve,

We use Enterprise Library 2005's configuration application block. It enables
you to store all application specific configuration information in a config
file (separate from the web.config to keep it from becoming messy) and
allows you to use a generic API provided by the configuration block to read
back values. The Enterprise Library 2005 comes with a configuration tool to
enable your application admin to modify the config files. This article
http://weblogs.asp.net/pgielens/archive/2005/05/16/406911.aspx explains how
to do this.

EntLib 2005
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...09-660E-444E-945A-6B32AF1581B3&displaylang=en

Best regards,
Paul Gielens

Visit my blog @ http://weblogs.asp.net/pgielens/
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[Steve]

Well I am thinking it might be changed fairly frequently, once every 2
days say.

 

[Steve]

I like this idea, but I don't want a non-tech admin editing a .vb file,
that's why I am think of using a database which can be updated online.

 

[Steve]

I like this idea, but I don't want a non-tech admin editing a .vb file,
that's why I am think of using a database which can be updated online.

 

[Edwin Knoppert]

That's really not necessary.
A simple resource text file could do.
I assume IIS/.NET will recompile resources as well when they are changed.

So a simple dummy-must-fill text file could do.
You simply drop the file once on a resource.rex (whatever it's name) part
and you are ready.

 

[Mark Rae]

Well I am thinking it might be changed fairly frequently, once every 2
days say.

LOL! Well they're not constant, are they...