Store String Array In appSettings?

Question

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)

Solution 1

You could use the AppSettings with a System.Collections.Specialized.StringCollection.

var myStringCollection = Properties.Settings.Default.MyCollection;
foreach (String value in myStringCollection)
{ 
    // do something
}

Each value is separated by a new line.

Here's a screenshot (german IDE but it might be helpful anyway)

Solution 2

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(',');

Solution 3

ASP.Net Core supports it binding a list of strings or objects.

For strings as mentioned, it is possible to retrieve it through AsEnumerable().

Or a list of objects via Get<List<MyObject>>(). The sample is below.

appsettings.json:

{
 ...
   "my_section": {
     "objs": [
       {
         "id": "2",
         "name": "Object 1"
       },
       {
         "id": "2",
         "name": "Object 2"
       }
     ]
   }
 ...
}

Class to represent the object

public class MyObject
{
    public string Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

Code to retrieve from appsettings.json

Configuration.GetSection("my_section:objs").Get<List<MyObject>>();

Solution 4

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();

Solution 5

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.

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