Brothers In Code

A lot of these posts are merely for my own quick reference.  The upside of that is that you'll get a taste for the way I actually do something rather than just a rehash of a reference page.

For simpler projects I just create a class with some static properties that just pull from AppConfig variables.  At least from there I have intellisense to help me remember all of my configuration variables.  But the appSettings section app.config or web.config can get messy pretty fast so creating a custom section isn't that much work to clean it up.

First I'll create a ConfigurationSections folder (which creates an automatic namespace) and an AppConfig class:

The GeneralConfigurationSectionClass looks like this:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Configuration;

namespace MyCust.MyProj.ConfigurationSections
{
  public class GeneralConfigurationSection : ConfigurationSection
  {
    [ConfigurationProperty("TestKey")]
    public String TestKey
    {
      get { return (String)this["TestKey"]; }
      set { this["TestKey"] = value; }
    }
    [ConfigurationProperty("ConnectionString")]
    public String ConnectionString
    {
      get { return (String)this["ConnectionString"]; }
      set { this["ConnectionString"] = value; }
    }
  }
}

Then I'll create a property that pulls the config data and returns this class in the AppConfig.cs

  public class AppConfig
  {
    public static GeneralConfigurationSection General
    {
      get
      {
        return (GeneralConfigurationSection)ConfigurationManager.GetSection("MyCust.MyProj/General");
      }
    }

  }

And last add the new section to the app/web.config.  First add the section group:

<configSections>
  <sectionGroup name="MyCust.MyProj.WebServices">
    <section name="General" type="MyCust.MyProj.WebServices.ConfigurationSections.GeneralConfigurationSection, MyCust.MyProj.WebServices" allowLocation="true" allowDefinition="Everywhere"/>
  </sectionGroup>
</configSections>

And then add the section itself into the configuration element:

<MyCust.MyProj.WebServices>
  <General
    TestKey="32AAAC4-8DB2-4059-852A-73BBBBBB9698"
    ConnectionString="Data Source=SqlServer;User Id=sa_app;Password=pwd;"
  />
</MyCust.MyProj.WebServices>

Usage is then a nice and clean line:

AppConfig.General.ConnectionString

B

I'll log errors to the event log for just about any app that I write with something like the following:

EventLog eventLog = new EventLog();
eventLog.Source = "My App Name";
eventLog.WriteEntry(message, EventLogEntryType.Error);

This is no problem for a windows app, but for an asp.net app running under a restricted account, you'll likely get an error:

System.Security.SecurityException: Requested registry access is not allowed.

The issue described here recommends either adding the event source manually in the registry or creating an EventLogInstaller.  Unless you're creating a commercial software package, you're probabaly going to go the registry route.  The only issue here is that the article leaves a peice out.  Adding only the key will allow your app to write to the event log but rather than your own neatly formatted error message you'll see:

The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source (<application name>) could not be found. It contains the following insertion string(s):

If you look at other keys you'll see they contain an "EventMessageFile" reg_expand_sz (expandable string value).  Asp.net 2.0 or higher apps will have the value "c:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\EventLogMessages.dll".  If you want a quick fix, here's the reg file code (make sure you save as unicode):

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Eventlog\Application\YourSourceNameHere]
"EventMessageFile"=hex(2):63,00,3a,00,5c,00,57,00,49,00,4e,00,44,00,4f,00,57,\
  00,53,00,5c,00,4d,00,69,00,63,00,72,00,6f,00,73,00,6f,00,66,00,74,00,2e,00,\
  4e,00,45,00,54,00,5c,00,46,00,72,00,61,00,6d,00,65,00,77,00,6f,00,72,00,6b,\
  00,5c,00,76,00,32,00,2e,00,30,00,2e,00,35,00,30,00,37,00,32,00,37,00,5c,00,\
  45,00,76,00,65,00,6e,00,74,00,4c,00,6f,00,67,00,4d,00,65,00,73,00,73,00,61,\
  00,67,00,65,00,73,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,00,00
 
 
 
 Here's the .net 4.0 version....

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\eventlog\Application\YourSourceNameHere]
"EventMessageFile"=hex(2):63,00,3a,00,5c,00,57,00,49,00,4e,00,44,00,4f,00,57,\
  00,53,00,5c,00,4d,00,69,00,63,00,72,00,6f,00,73,00,6f,00,66,00,74,00,2e,00,\
  4e,00,45,00,54,00,5c,00,46,00,72,00,61,00,6d,00,65,00,77,00,6f,00,72,00,6b,\
  00,5c,00,76,00,34,00,2e,00,30,00,2e,00,33,00,30,00,33,00,31,00,39,00,5c,00,\
  45,00,76,00,65,00,6e,00,74,00,4c,00,6f,00,67,00,4d,00,65,00,73,00,73,00,61,\
  00,67,00,65,00,73,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,00,00