What is the preferred way of reading an application's configuration file in .NET 4? I've seen several articles on how to do with .NET 2. I don't know if things have changed/improved with .NET 4.
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2 Answers
The ConfigurationManager is still the preferred way of reading the application config and web config files.
To use it you will first need to add a reference in your project to System.Configuration.
Then you will need to add a reference to it in your class with:
using System.Configuration;
Once you have done this you will be able to access things like your AppSettings and ConnectionStrings by calling these static properties on the ConfigurationManager class.
e.g.
ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["settingname"];
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Most developers seem to be happy with the string-based ConfigurationManager.AppSettings style of configuration, but there is another way: strongly typed configuration.
The MSDN reference is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8eyb2ct1.aspx
In a nutshell, you can define your own configuration setting section and have your own strongly typed configuration items in there. Amongst other things this
- (as the name implies) can force use of enumerated options
- allows you to define user-based or application-based settings
- allows you to define defaults
The main downside is that it's a bit of a faff to get going as there's quite a bit of code to implement and test.
