How to add a xml in web.config?

Question

I have some complex data which is used for application configuration in xml format. I want to keep this xml string in web.config. Is it possible to add a big xml string in web.config and get it in code everywhere?

Solution 1

If you don't want to write a configuration section handler, you could just put your XML in a custom configuration section that is mapped to IgnoreSectionHandler:

<configuration>
    <configSections>
      <section 
          name="myCustomElement" 
          type="System.Configuration.IgnoreSectionHandler" 
          allowLocation="false" />
    </configSections>
    ...
    <myCustomElement>
        ... complex XML ...
    </myCustomElement>
    ...
</configuration>

You can then read it using any XML API, e.g. XmlDocument, XDocument, XmlReader classes. E.g.:

XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
doc.Load(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation.ConfigurationFile);
XmlElement node = doc.SelectSingleNode("/configuration/myCustomElement") as XmlElement;
... etc ...

Solution 2

There are several ways of achieving what you want (an XML fragment that is globally and statically accessible to your application code):

• The web.config is already an XML file. You can write a custom configuration section (as described here) in order to fetch the data from your custom XML.

• You can encode the XML data (all < to <, > to &gt, & to &, " to &quote;)

• You can put the XML data in a <![CDATA[]]> section

• Don't use web.config for this, but a Settings file as @Yuck commented

That last option is the best one, in terms of ease of development and usage.

Comments

[Gulshan]

Is it possible to add an array of objects in settings file?

[Oded]

Not an array, as far as I am aware, but you can add collections (there is a built in StringCollection, for example).

[Gulshan]

Probably this is what I looking for.

[Gulshan]

Will u plz tell how can I read the "...complex xml..." as a string in my code?

[Joe]

@Idorado, I added an example of reading the custom element using the XmlDocument class.

[Gulshan]

Thank you Joe This is exactly what i was searching.

[JohnDoDo]

@Gulshan: It's nice to reward this user if his answer solved your issue by marking the answer as accepted.

[Boogier]

<section> describer must be put in <configuration><configSections> And <myCustomElement> in <applicationSettings>

[Admin]

@Joe, Thanks! Nice and clean way to do it.

[Admin]

@Boogier, No need to put <myCustomElement> in applicationSettings, because, you can define your own Custom Element in the config file this way.