I'd like to store a one dimensional string array as an entry in my appSettings
. I can't simply separate elements with ,
or |
because the elements themselves could contain those characters.
I was thinking of storing the array as JSON
then deserializing it using the JavaScriptSerializer
.
Is there a "right" / better way to do this?
(My JSON
idea feels kinda hacky)
You could use the AppSettings with a System.Collections.Specialized.StringCollection
.
var myStringCollection = Properties.Settings.Default.MyCollection;
foreach (String value in myCollection)
{
// do something
}
Each value is separated by a new line.
Here's a screenshot (german IDE but it might be helpful anyway)
For integers I found the following way quicker.
First of all create a appSettings key with integer values separated by commas in your app.config.
<add key="myIntArray" value="1,2,3,4" />
Then split and convert the values into int array by using LINQ
int[] myIntArray = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["myIntArray"].Split(',').Select(n => Convert.ToInt32(n)).ToArray();
For strings it is easy, simply add the following to your web.config
file:
<add key="myStringArray" value="fred,Jim,Alan" />
and then you can retrieve the value into an array as follows:
var myArray = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("myStringArray").Split(',');
You may also consider using custom configuration section/Collection for this purpose.
Here is a sample:
<configSections>
<section name="configSection" type="YourApp.ConfigSection, YourApp"/>
</configSections>
<configSection xmlns="urn:YourApp">
<stringItems>
<item value="String Value"/>
</stringItems>
</configSection>
You can also check on this excellent Visual Studio add-in that allows you to graphically design .NET Configuration Sections and automatically generates all the required code and a schema definition (XSD) for them.