Question

I have a .net github project that is basically a wrapper around a web API. In the test project, I am calling to the API using an API key. I need to keep this key private, how do I accomplish this in a visual studio project?

In some other projects, like python, I can have git ignore the file (config.py) and use something like config.example.py. But in visual studio’s case, the project will not compile because of the missing file Config.cs. What is the proper way to solve this? I’m thinking of using this same method of ignoring the file and have them execute a build script that should rename Config.example.cs to Config.cs?

Answer 1

This is the perfect for .config files. Depending on whether its a web or console application, you will have a web.config or app.config file in your project.

You can use the appSettings section to store your API key.

To make things even easier, you can actually have this section read from another file, ie: specialappsettings.config and then just ignore that single file from your repository.

Modify your web.config (or app.config):

<configuration>
<appSettings file="specialappsettings.config">
</appSettings>
<system.web>
<!-- standard web settings go here -->
</system.web>
</configuration>

Create a new specialappsettings.config file:

<appSettings>
<add key="APIKey" value="YourApiKeyValue" />
<add key="AnotherKey" value="AnotherValue" />
</appSettings>

This can be accessed in your code via:

var apiKey = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["APIKey"];

Notes:

• You can keep your settings within the original web.config file as
  well but this lets you ignore just the specific settings file from
  your git repository without affecting the rest of the project’s
  necessary configuration details.
• The same “key” can be saved in
  either file however the external file will override the original
  web.config file value.