You can store the connecting string information in your web.config file in two ways:
- Using <appSettings> Section
- Using <CustomSection> Section.
Using <appSettings> Section
The predefined <appSettings> section can be placed in any web.config file or the machine.config file. This section is useful for storing name-value pairs of data. An example of the use of the <appSettings> section is as follows,
<appSettings>
<add key=”ConnectionString” Value=”myconnectionstring” />
</appSettings>
To access the appSettings Value, you need to use ConfiugrationSttings.AppSetting["ConnectionString"]. This uses the NameValueFileSectionHandler, which returns a System.Collection.Specialized.NameValueCollection object. The collection implements the IEnumerable interface so you can enumerate the collection, or read values directly for any valid key.
Using <CustomSection> Section
You can create your own custom sections in a configuration file. The easiest way to do this is to configure one of the pre-existing configuration section handlers, assuming your section uses one of the generic structures such as name-value data, or single tag data. In this particular case you might use the Name-Value data. To do this, you need to use the pre-defined section handlers.
For example, you can define a section called , <myNameValueSection>
<myNameValueSection>
<add key=”ConnectionString” Value=”my connection string”
<myNameValueSection>
To read the data, you will need the following code snippet ,
NameValuecollection config = ConfigurationSettings.GetConfig(“myNameValueSection”)
For each key in config.keys
label1.Text = “Key:” + key.toString()
label2.Text = “Value:” + config[key]
End Loop
