Question

I have a simple program that would let the user add a section to a custom config file, it would have more settings than what is shown. I populate a datagridview with a list of all configurations. My problem is, the method to populate the listbox wouldn’t know all the names of the sections that the user may have added, I’m trying to be dynamic. Is there an easy way to loop through these sections and get their names? Or do I have to make a Section, Collection, and Elements in order to to this?

Thanks.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
 <configSections>
    <section name="Jason" type="SQLQueryOutput.SQLQueryOutputConfigSection, SQLQueryOutput, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=760d257b40400289" />
    <section name="Steve" type="SQLQueryOutput.SQLQueryOutputConfigSection, SQLQueryOutput, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=760d257b40400289" />
</configSections>
    <Jason OutputFilePath="C:\temp\jason.txt" />
    <Steve OutputFilePath="C:\temp\steve.txt" />
</configuration>

Answer 1

How about using Linq To Xml to parse your config file. For example,

var xDoc = XDocument.Load(configFile);
var sections = xDoc.XPathSelectElements("//configSections/section")
                    .Select(x=>x.Attributes().ToDictionary(a=>a.Name,a=>a.Value))
                    .ToList();

var name = sections[0]["name"];

or

var outputFilePaths = xDoc.Root.Elements()
       .Where(d => d.Name.LocalName != "configSections")
       .ToDictionary(e => e.Name.LocalName, e => e.Attribute("OutputFilePath").Value);