Question

I have 2 windows forms in a solution and want to read some values from the respective config files of each app.

The second form is like an ‘option/tool’ from the first form. So in first form, I do:

someEventOfForm1...
{
 Form2 f = new Form2();
 f.ShowDialog();
}

Now, when ‘f’ tries to read from its config file, it ends up reading config file of first form. I want f to read its own config file.

• What should one do in such a scenario?
• Is it a bad design to open another form from one?

Answer 1

What should one do in such a scenario?

You can have only one application configuration file per application. Put the configuration settings for the project containing Form2 into the app.config file in the project containing Form1.

Is it a bad design to open another form from one?

Not necessarily – it’s often a fundamental strategy for creating multi-window applications.