ConnectionString - best practices ques

[G. Dean Blake]

We currently distribute a web application to serveral servers for a
customer. We have been putting the connection string in our web.config file
under <appSettings> <add key="dbconn.Connectionstring" value="workstation
id=server025....... etc.

When we deploy the application we have to change the workstation id and
source parameters to name the server where the database will be.

We tried to simply specify localhost however VS.NET could not deal with this
because the data connection in server explorer has to have the read dev box
server name.

Questions are:
Is this the best place to put the connection string?
Is there any way to specify "localhost" and still get VS.NET to work with
that?
Is there any way I can tweak this connectionstring in the windows installer?
Thanks,
Dean

 

[Kevin Spencer]

One possible solution. Use Environment.MachineName to get the name of the
local machine. Use that in your Connection String.

--
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
..Net Developer
Microsoft MVP
Big things are made up
of lots of little things.

 

[Saravana [MVP]]

Here are few options for storing connection string,

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="my connection string" />
</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,

Accessing the appSettings Section
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpguide/htm
l/cpgrfaccessingappsettingssection.asp

- 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");
Foreach (string key in config.keys)
{
label1.Text = "Key:" + key.toString();
label2.Text = "Value:" + config[key];
}