Question

I have ‘inherited’ a test harness application which uses Enterprise Library for its SQL data access. In the app.config file (enterpriselibrary.configurationSettings), it references a “configurationSection” with a path to “dataConfig.config”, which is encrypted. I would like to change the database connection properties, but EntLibConfig.exe will not open the dataConfig.config or app.config (I have the FileKeyAlgorithmPairStorageProviderData file).

The test harness application runs, so its configured ok.

I can, in code, using (Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.GetConfiguration(“dataConfiguration”)) read the data configuration, and can navigate all the instances and connection strings (security isn’t an issue for this test harness). I can dump everything I need to a hand-crafted XML file (using GetType().AssemblyQualifiedName to get the full name for the classes which read the config file) and then change the app.config to read my new, unencrypted, xml dataConfig file.

All is fine, I can now change my database config settings.

However… given that ConfigurationManager.GetConfiguration(“dataConfiguration”) returns a fully populated instance of a DatabaseSettings object, is there not a method I can call which will write the XML file (dataConfig.config) for me ?

I appreciate that this is probably a really big hammer way to edit the data configuration, but after half a day of trying, I fell back on the old coding maxim… if you can’t find the tool to do what you want, write your own !

Thanks

Answer 1

Well… turns out that its not that hard.

I added a new “configurationSection” to my app.config (dataConfiguration2), with encrypt set to false, with a path pointing to an new empty text file (dataConfiguration.config2). I then copied my encrypted dataConfiguration details using the following code:

using Entlib = Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Configuration;
using Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary.Data.Configuration;
    :
DatabaseSettings settings = (DatabaseSettings)Entlib.ConfigurationManager.GetConfiguration("dataConfiguration");
Entlib.ConfigurationManager.WriteConfiguration("dataConfiguration2", settings);

…and it filled the empty file with the (unencrypted) configuration details.