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Source Code

The CodeBaseClient application can be found under the Chapter 15 subdirectory.

The System.Configuration Namespace

Currently, all of the *.config files shown in this chapter have made use of well-known XML ele-

ments that are read by the CLR to resolve the location of external assemblies. In addition to these

recognized elements, it is perfectly permissible for a client configuration file to contain application-

specific data that has nothing to do with binding heuristics. Given this, it should come as no

surprise that the .NET Framework provides a namespace that allows you to programmatically read

the data within a client configuration file.

The System.Configuration namespace provides a small set of types you may use to read cus-

tom data from a client’s *.config file. These custom settings must be contained within the scope of

an  element. The  element contains any number of  elements that

define a key/value pair to be obtained programmatically.

For example, assume you have an App.config file for a Console Application named

AppConfigReaderApp that defines a database connection string and a point of data named

timesToSayHello:

"Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=AutoLot;Integrated Security=True" />

Reading these values for use by the client application is as simple as calling the instance-level

GetValue() method of the System.Configuration.AppSettingsReader type. As shown in the follow-

ing code, the first parameter to GetValue() is the name of the key in the *.config file, whereas the

second parameter is the underlying type of the key (obtained via the C# typeof operator):

using System.Configuration;

class Program

{

static void Main(string[] args)

{

Console.WriteLine("***** Reading Data *****\n");