Alex Rivera | Logout

Read .NET configuration from database

Asked 2009-04-11T11:21:15.133
13

The .NET 2.0 and up configuration system is quite powerful and extensible - as long as you don't want to change the fact it all comes from XML files in the filesystem.

In my requirement, I cannot change files since my app runs in a managed environment outside my reach - but I could change the SQL Server database.

So I am looking at storing configuration files or sections in a SQL table - but how can I tie the .NET 2.0 configuration system into this??

Is there a way to write a "custom config provider" that will read its config sections not from a *.config file in the file system, but from a table in the SQL database??

I've been looking at creating my own custom ConfigurationSection or ConfigurationElement, or even a custom Configuration per se - but it seems I always end up back at the point that I can extend the config-system in the filesystem as much as I like, but I can't make it read my XML fragments from a database table.....

What am I missing? Has someone done this already and care to explain / share?

Thanks! Marc

PS: I also tried to just read the config XML into a string, and then deserializing it into the appropriate e.g. ServiceModelConfigSection - that doesn't work, unfortunately, because the ConfigSection base class somehow doesn't implement a method that is required for it to be XML serializable ........ (YIKES!!!)

.net sql-server configuration
Edit
Report

1 Answer

1

You can try Cinchoo framework for your needs.

It supports reading and writing configuration entries to File, Registry, INI, Database etc.

Here is the simple way to define and use the configuration object using Cinchoo framework

namespace HelloWorld
{
    #region NameSpaces

    using System;
    using Cinchoo.Core.Configuration;

    #endregion NameSpaces

    [ChoConfigurationSection("sample")]
    public class SampleConfigSection : ChoConfigurableObject
    {
        [ChoPropertyInfo("name", DefaultValue="Mark")]
        public string Name;

        [ChoPropertyInfo("message", DefaultValue="Hello World!")]
        public string Message;
    }

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        SampleConfigSection sampleConfigSection = new SampleConfigSection();
        Console.WriteLine(sampleConfigSection.ToString());
    }

}

Very first time, when you run the application, Cinchoo framework automatically generates the configuration section as below. Then onwards, you can control them either through configuration source or by code.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="sample" type="Cinchoo.Core.Configuration.ChoNameValueSectionHandler, Cinchoo.Core, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b7dacd80ff3e33de" />
  </configSections>
  <sample>
    <add key="name" value="Mark" />
    <add key="message" value="Hello World!" />
  </sample>
</configuration>

Try it!

answered 2012-03-23T15:11:15.780

Your Answer