Sharing Config File Settings

[headware]

I have an ASP.NET application and I need to create a Windows service
that is related to it. I would like to share some of the configuration
file settings in Web.config between the two. There are configuration
items in the <appSettings>, <connectionStrings> and
<system.web><mailSettings></system.web> sections that I need to be
able to access in the Windows service.

I know that some parts of config files allow you to specify an outside
file as the source but <connectionStrings> and <systemweb> don't
appear to allow this.

I could just parse the Web.config file from the Windows service but
isn't there some built in support for this? Can you load an external
config file somehow?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[sloan]

One way.
"Push out" some of the settings to seperate files. And share the files
between projects.

Below is what I have in my asp.net project web.config file.
You can probably do the same in a winforms app or windows service.


<?xml version="1.0"?>

<configuration>


<appSettings file="CustomAppSettings.config">

</appSettings>

<connectionStrings configSource="ExternalConnectionStrings.config" />

</configuration>


===========================

**Contents of** ExternalConnectionStrings.config

<connectionStrings >


<add name="LocalDatabaseInstance"
connectionString="server=MyServer;database=MyDatabase;Integrated
Security=SSPI; Pooling=false; " providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>

</connectionStrings>


==========================
**Contents of** CustomAppSettings.config

<appSettings>

<add key="Key1" value="Value1" />
<add key="Key2" value="Value2" />

</appSettings>

 

[headware]

One way.
"Push out" some of the settings to seperate files.  And share the files
between projects.

Below is what I have in my asp.net project web.config file.
You can probably do the same in a winforms app or windows service.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<configuration>

<appSettings file="CustomAppSettings.config">

</appSettings>

<connectionStrings configSource="ExternalConnectionStrings.config" />

</configuration>

===========================

**Contents of** ExternalConnectionStrings.config

<connectionStrings >

<add name="LocalDatabaseInstance"
connectionString="server=MyServer;database=MyDatabase;Integrated
Security=SSPI; Pooling=false; " providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>

</connectionStrings>

==========================
**Contents of** CustomAppSettings.config

<appSettings>

 <add key="Key1" value="Value1" />
 <add key="Key2" value="Value2" />

</appSettings>

Thanks for the input. I'm not sure what the difference between the
"file" and "configSource" attributes are, but the <mailSettings>
element doesn't have either one. This solution will get me most of the
way there, I was just hoping that there was a more generic, complete
solution.

Dave