Question

I have an entry in my Web.Config file that indicates which environment I am in for connection strings and junk:

<add key="AppEnv" value ="2" /> <!--(0 = Dev, 1 = test, 2 = prod)--> 

I am looking for a way to alert the developer, at the time of publishing, to make sure they have checked this key/value so that they don’t publish the ‘test’ to the ‘prod’ server and vice versa.

Thanks

Answer 1

I have come up with my own (probably unconventional) solution to this issue. We develop many different web projects for many different clients and have migrated all of them to this method due to all of the issues we have had with multiple web.config files, or required edits before publishing.

Basically, we let our app tell us which environment its running under based on the incoming URL. We initialize this on the first request and store it in memory for the life of the app. This way we can store each of our environment specific config values in the same config file and just qualify them with Development, Staging, Production, etc. And any settings that dont differ between environments dont need to be qualified.

First a sample web.config:

<appSettings>
    <add key="DevelopmentHost" value="dev.trackmyhours.com" />
    <add key="StagingHost" value="staging.trackmyhours.com" />
    <add key="ProductionHost" value="www.trackmyhours.com" />
  </appSettings>

  <connectionStrings>
    <clear />
    <add name="DevelopmentConnectionString" connectionString="your dev conn string" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
    <add name="StagingConnectionString" connectionString="your staging conn string (mine is typically same as staging)" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
    <add name="ProductionConnectionString" connectionString="your production conn string" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
  </connectionStrings>

Next we have an “App” class that gives us access to our “Site” class, but you could architect your classes however you see fit.

Public Class App

    Private Shared _Site As New Site
    Public Shared ReadOnly Property Site() As Site
        Get
            Return _Site
        End Get
    End Property

End Class

---

Imports System.Configuration
Imports System.Web

Public Class Site

    Public Enum EnvironmentType
        Development
        Staging
        Production
    End Enum

    Friend Sub New()

        If HttpContext.Current IsNot Nothing Then

            Dim URL = HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.DnsSafeHost

            Select Case URL
                Case ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("DevelopmentHost"), "localhost"
                    _Environment = EnvironmentType.Development
                Case ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("StagingHost")
                    _Environment = EnvironmentType.Staging
                Case ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("ProductionHost")
                    _Environment = EnvironmentType.Production
            End Select

        Else
            'probably getting called from a winforms/console app, or unit tests
            _Environment = EnvironmentType.Staging

        End If

        _ConnectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings(_Environment.ToString & "ConnectionString").ConnectionString

    End Sub


    Private _Environment As EnvironmentType
    Public Property Environment() As EnvironmentType
        Get
            Return _Environment
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As EnvironmentType)
            _Environment = value

            _ConnectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings(_Environment.ToString & "ConnectionString").ConnectionString

        End Set
    End Property

    Private _ConnectionString As String
    Public ReadOnly Property ConnectionString() As String
        Get
            Return _ConnectionString
        End Get
    End Property

End Class

We put our classes in our Biz Object class library. We just decided that it is not necessary to determine the environment on every single request, since it really cant change during the app’s lifetime. Also, this allows us to reference App.Site.Environment from ANYWHERE in code in the library or code behind. This is also helpful if you need to sprinkle some conditional logic in your code – like not sending emails to real people when running in dev/staging.

One last thing – for our Linq2SQL or EF Data/ObjectContexts, we do not store the connection string in the file, and instead overload the constructor so we can supply our correct environment connection string like this:

Partial Class SampleDataContext
    Sub New()
        MyBase.New(App.Site.ConnectionString)
    End Sub
End Class