Question

I need to change the values for this section during the install, specifically the the stateConnectionString:

<sessionState mode="Off|InProc|StateServer|SQLServer"
              cookieless="true|false"
              timeout="number of minutes"
              stateConnectionString="tcpip=server:port"
              sqlConnectionString="sql connection string"
              stateNetworkTimeout="number of seconds"/>

Answer 1

You can add a custom action to your installer and then in that action replace the connection string.

One other option to consider is to update the connection string as part of the build process, so that when you create a production build, the connection string is udpated and packaged with the rest of the files.

Here’s a link to a custom action walkthrough from MSDN: Walkthrough: Creating a Custom Action