MGKConfigurationManager

Simple configuration manager for settings and secrets in .NET

MGKConfigurationManager is a simple .NET library for pulling in per-project and solution-wide secrets and solution-wide settings when developing locally. (Per-project settings will be in web.config as normal.) When running in a hosted environment (e.g. Microsoft Azure) settings and secrets would typically be stored in an app configuration settings store or a dedicated key vault.

All settings and secrets are stored outside the project working directory so as not to be checked into source control.

MGKConfigurationManager imports all settings and secrets into a single, flat namespace implemented as a .NET NameValueCollection. As a result key names must be unique across all config files. MGKConfigurationManager uses the .NET configuration management classes so it will grab secrets and settings whether they're defined in local config files, server-based config files or in the Azure App Service Application Settings blade.

MGKConfigurationManager has no error or exception handling.

Configuration:

Place the following in the <configSections> element of your web.config file in each project within a given solution:

<configSections>
  <section name="LocalSecrets" type="System.Configuration.NameValueFileSectionHandler, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />
  <section name="GlobalSecrets" type="System.Configuration.NameValueFileSectionHandler, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />
  <section name="GlobalSettings" type="System.Configuration.NameValueFileSectionHandler, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" />
</configSections>

Place the following directly under the <configuration> element of your web.config file in each project within a given solution:

<LocalSecrets file="..\..\{SOLUTION_NAME}.Settings\{PROJECT_NAME}\localsecrets.config"></LocalSecrets>
<GlobalSecrets file="..\..\{SOLUTION_NAME}.Settings\globalsecrets.config"></GlobalSecrets>
<GlobalSettings file="..\..\{SOLUTION_NAME}.Settings\globalsettings.config"></GlobalSettings>

where:

• {SOLUTION_NAME} is the name of your overall solution
• {PROJECT_NAME} is the name of the project where the web.config file resides

localsecrets.config, globalsecrets.config and globalsettings.config look as follows:

localsecrets.config:

<LocalSecrets>
  <add key="key1" value="value1" />
  <add key="key2" value="value2" />
</LocalSecrets>

globalsecrets.config:

<GlobalSecrets>
  <add key="key1" value="value1" />
  <add key="key2" value="value2" />
</GlobalSecrets>

globalsettings.config:

<GlobalSettings>
  <add key="key1" value="value1" />
  <add key="key2" value="value2" />
</GlobalSettings>

Sample directory structure:

\My_solution_dir
  \Project1
    web.config
  \Project2
    web.config
  \Project3
  My_solution.sln
\My_solution.Settings
  globalsecrets.config
  globalsettings.config
  \Project1
    localsecrets.config
  \Project2
    localsecrets.config
  \Project3
    localsecrets.config

Usage:

Bootstrap MGKConfigurationManager as follows - when your app starts (entry point will depend on project type), create a static instance of MGKConfigurationManager passing an array of custom section names as shown above.

static MGKConfigurationManager settings = new MGKConfigurationManager(new string[] { "LocalSecrets", "GlobalSecrets", "GlobalSettings" });

MGKConfigurationManager imports all settings and secrets - regardless of the source as stated above - into a single, flat namespace. Key name uniqueness is a requirement. Values are retrieved as follows:

settings.AppSettings["My_setting_or_secret_name"]);

Requests for non-existent key names return an empty string.