Question

I have bunch of default strings and ints throughout the app. like default names, etc,etc. Those are all constants. I just want to access them in different pages in my app. What is the best place to place them? I was thinking about Enum or something similar. What is the best approach?

Answer 1

The best place is to put them into the appSettings section of your web.config file:

  <appSettings>
    <add key="myKey" value="myValue"/>
  </appSettings>

You can then read the key/value pairs using the ConfigurationManager class:

' Get the AppSettings section.        
' This function uses the AppSettings property
' to read the appSettings configuration 
' section.
Public Shared Sub ReadAppSettings()
    Try
        ' Get the AppSettings section.
        Dim appSettings As NameValueCollection = _
            ConfigurationManager.AppSettings

        ' Get the AppSettings section elements.
        Console.WriteLine()
        Console.WriteLine("Using AppSettings property.")
        Console.WriteLine("Application settings:")

        If appSettings.Count = 0 Then
            Console.WriteLine( _
            "[ReadAppSettings: {0}]", _
            "AppSettings is empty Use GetSection first.")
        End If
        Dim i As Integer = 0
        While i < appSettings.Count
            Console.WriteLine( _
                "#{0} Key: {1} Value: {2}", _
                i, appSettings.GetKey(i), appSettings(i))
            System.Math.Max( _
                System.Threading.Interlocked. _
                Increment(i), i - 1)
        End While
    Catch e As ConfigurationErrorsException
        Console.WriteLine("[ReadAppSettings: {0}]", _
                          e.ToString())
    End Try
End Sub