Question

I have a console based application which pulls files from a database and outputs them onto the C drive. It also outputs an excel file with the details of all outputted files. Here is the snippet of code from the app.config file.

  <target name="Group1" acceptedFileTypes="pdf">
    <ftpSettings server="localhost" username="anonymous" password="[e-mail]" />
    <metadataEncoder name="Group1" fileName="Group1_YYYYMMDD.xls" />
  </target>

Ideally, when the program runs, I would like the excel file to be named with the date appended onto the end of it. Is there any way I can achieve this in the app.config file?

Also, here is the class that relating to the above app.config snippet:

public class MetadataEncoderElement : ConfigurationElement
{
    private static readonly ConfigurationProperty messageName = new ConfigurationProperty("name", typeof(string), string.Empty, ConfigurationPropertyOptions.IsRequired);
    private static readonly ConfigurationProperty fileName = new ConfigurationProperty("fileName", typeof(string), string.Empty, ConfigurationPropertyOptions.IsRequired);

    public MetadataEncoderElement()
    {
        this.Properties.Add(messageName);
    }

    [ConfigurationProperty("name", IsRequired = true)]
    public string Name { get { return (string)this[messageName]; } }

    [ConfigurationProperty("fileName", IsRequired = true)]
    public string FileName { get { return (string)this[fileName]; } }
}

Any help would be appreciated, thanks guys.

EDIT

Have edited my code to the following

[ConfigurationProperty("fileName", IsRequired = true)]
public string FileName = string.Format(MetadataEncoderElement.fileName, DateTime.Now);

However now I have the following errors:

The best overloaded method match
for’string.Format(System.IFormatProvider,
string, params object[])’ has some
invalid arguments

Argument 1: cannot convert from’System.Configuration.ConfigurationProperty’
to ‘System.IFormatProvider’

Argument 2: cannot convert from ‘System.DateTime’ to ‘string’

Answer 1

Slightly improved version of Richards answer:

<metadataEncoder name="Group1" fileName="Group1_{0:yyyyMMdd}.xls" />

in the code

string fileName = string.Format(yourconfig.FileName,DateTime.Now);

EDIT:
If you want to build it in your Property you can do it this way:

[ConfigurationProperty("fileName", IsRequired = true)]
public string FileName { get { return string.Format((string)this[fileName], DateTime.Now); } }