Context Sensitive Config Files

M. Keith Warren was asking for an enhancement to the web.config to look like:

<configuration Name=”Release”>
    <system.web>
 …
    </system.web>
</configuration>
<configuration Name=”Debug”>
    <system.web>
 …
    </system.web>
</configuration>

We solved a similar problem for all config files by creating a wrapper around AppSetting and ConfigurationSettings that looked at various things (machine name, database server, ...) to determine the environment and use the correct settings. I.e.

<appSettings>
     <add key="logging-level" value="debug" />
</appSettings>

<test-environment>
     <add key="logging-level" value="verbose" />
</test-environment>

<prod-environment>
    <add key="logging-level" value="brief" />
</prod-environment>  

This demonstrates also the cascading feature, if the environment is not specified the setting in appSettings is used, this way common settings don't have to be repeated.