Home/ Questions/Q 3277596
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-17T19:23:12+00:00

I have the correct entries in the web.config file in my ASP.NET project. How

  • 0

I have the correct entries in the web.config file in my ASP.NET project. How do I make sure that the connection has been established successfully? I want to pull an image form my database and then display it on my aspx page. Some things to note: I am using Visual Studio 2010, SQL server 2008, .NET 4.0
Here is the relevant part from my web.config file

<databases>    
    <add key="MyConnection" name="MyName" value="server=servername\SQL2008;uid=myuid;pwd=mypwd;database=databaseName;"/>  
    <add key="DataAccessClass" value="DataAccessSql"/>  
</databases>

I do not have any app.config file in my project yet. Surprisingly there is not section in my web.config. Do I need to add one explicitly?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The connection parameters entered in the web.config file are just parameters. No actual connections are made. In fact, multiple connection parameters can be made in the web.config and the actual connection can be made at runtime.

    To actually make a connection happen, you need to define

    For instance, here the SQLDataSource is set to connect to ConnectionStrings.MyNorthwind

    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" >
  <head runat="server">
    <title>ASP.NET Example</title>
</head>
<body>
    <form id="form1" runat="server">
      <asp:SqlDataSource
          id="SqlDataSource1"
          runat="server"
          DataSourceMode="DataReader"
          ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:MyNorthwind%>"
          SelectCommand="SELECT LastName FROM Employees">
      </asp:SqlDataSource>

      <asp:ListBox
          id="ListBox1"
          runat="server"
          DataTextField="LastName"
          DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1">
      </asp:ListBox>

    </form>
  </body>
</html>

    or in this second example, where they explicitely create an SqlConnection. The connectionstring here would be taken from the web.config.

    private static void ReadOrderData(string connectionString)
{
    string queryString = 
        "SELECT OrderID, CustomerID FROM dbo.Orders;";
    using (SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(
               connectionString))
    {
        SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand(
            queryString, connection);
        connection.Open();
        SqlDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader();
        try
        {
            while (reader.Read())
            {
                Console.WriteLine(String.Format("{0}, {1}",
                    reader[0], reader[1]));
            }
        }
        finally
        {
            // Always call Close when done reading.
            reader.Close();
        }
    }
}

    Here is an example of a connection string to be found in your web.config

    <configuration>
  <connectionStrings>
    <add name="ApplicationServices"
         connectionString="data source=.\SQLEXPRESS;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|\aspnetdb.mdf;User Instance=true"
         providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
  </connectionStrings>
</configuration>
    • 0