Question

I can’t see anything on here but I do remember being told that If you want an application to update a config file then it needs to be under …

**C:\Users\Ibrar Mumtaz\AppData**

Well somewhere there, the reason being is that the user should have permisions to update a config file here and not under the applications install folder. This is the impression that I am under and I’m fairly certain that this is definately the case. As I think I read that on here = p

My question is, is there anybody on here that can shine some light on this as this is the last feature I want to implement before I give my application out to test.

1) First thing is, an installer is needed to set up the folder and then drop my apps config file into it. I already am using the visial studio installer so I have my app packaged up but this point is throwing me off? How do I do this then? I just need someone to show how to do this and I should be O.K reconfiguring my app to look for the new home of the config file.

2) I should be able to work out how to find the folder and locate the config file found within it. As once I know the installer is chucking the config file out into the right folder where the user has permissions then it should be straight forward from there.

Thanks for reading.

UPDATE:

It was pretty straight foward, as the VS Installer has an option to add a special folder so all that was left was to access the folder programmatically and read and write to the config file. ONE PROBLEM? The ConfigurationManager class which I have used to create my config file for my application expects my config file to be local to the application and not miles away in a completey different part of the local FileSystem? Errr help here Plz?

Ibrar

Answer 1

Because I did not technically find the answer I was looking for, after 6 months I have come back to my application and have managed to produce a solution that does not break my current architecture.

If you are implementing an application to make use of some of the features on offer by the ConfigurationManager then it offers a static method called:

ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration(); // takes two arguements.

It can be used like this:

        ExeConfigurationFileMap fileMap = new ExeConfigurationFileMap();
        fileMap.ExeConfigFilename = returnUsersAppDataFolderPath();

        Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration(fileMap, ConfigurationUserLevel.None);

e.g

fileMap.ExeConfigFileName = @"some file path external to your applications install folder."

remember to use ‘@’ symbol in front to allow the compiler to literally treat the string on as is basis.

If the config file can be conveniently locally located then just use the:

ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(string exePath)

Above is what you would typically use but for me i needed my config file to located under the users AppData folder so the first option is what I needed. And it does indeed work.

I hope this helps others as it does for me as I want to deploy my application to Win7 and vista environments therefore this question needed asking if I was to stick to using the ConfigurationManager it’s a shame the method of choice in the end never really stood out in the first place = ).

If you want to read from your config file then leave a comment and I will show you how I managed to do that also.