Question

I plan to set up configuration keys for FormFields, QueryString parameters etc. In my web.config I have setting as follows:

<WhiteListPaametersGroup>
  <WhiteListPaameters>
    <FormField1>EVENTVALIDATION</FormField1>
    <FormField2>VIEWSTATE</FormField2>
    <FormField3>Button1</FormField3>

    <QueryString1>firstname</QueryString1>
    <QueryString2>lastname</QueryString2>

  </WhiteListPaameters>
</WhiteListPaametersGroup>

Then in my code, I read the value as follows:

Dictionary<string, string> parameters = new Dictionary<string,string>();

foreach (XmlNode n in section.ChildNodes)
{
    parameters.Add(n.Name, n.InnerText);
}

Is there a better way of storing this. Later on, I want to be able to go through dictionary like object, and be able to get settings for FormFields, Querystrings etc.

Please let me know if I could write it cleaner.

Thanks

Answer 1

You can use XML serialization to store your settings and restore them directly into an object. It’s not perfect but very easy to set up and gives you object save/restore.

Have this class (properties must be public):

public class WhiteListParameters
{
    public string FormField1 { get; set; }
    public string FormField2 { get; set; }
    public string FormField3 { get; set; }

    public string QueryString1 { get; set; }
    public string QueryString2 { get; set; }
}

To save it to XML file run this code:

WhiteListParameters parms = new WhiteListParameters
                                {
                                    FormField1 = "EVENTVALIDATION",
                                    FormField2 = "VIEWSTATE",
                                    FormField3 = "Button1",
                                    QueryString1 = "firstname",
                                    QueryString2 = "lastname"
                                };

using(StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter("C:\\temp\\config.xml"))
{
    XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof (WhiteListParameters));
    xs.Serialize(sw, parms);
    sw.Close();
}

To read it back into an object:

using(StreamReader sr = new StreamReader("c:\\temp\\config.xml"))
{
    XmlSerializer xs = new XmlSerializer(typeof (WhiteListParameters));
    WhiteListParameters parms = (WhiteListParameters) xs.Deserialize(sr);
    sr.Close();
}