Question

I would like to have a variable defined in my web.config that I can use in multiple places within my web.config file (and other config files). It’s probably easier to explain by example …

web.config

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
    <appSettings>
        <add key="AuthServiceEndPoint" value="any_old_name_i_like"/>
    </appSettings>
    <system.web>

    ...

    <system.serviceModel>
        <client>
            <endpoint
                address="net.tcp://localhost/AuthService"
                binding="netTcpBinding"
                contract="MyServices.Contracts.IAuthService"
                name="#{AppSettings.AuthServiceEndPoint}"
                bindingConfiguration="netTcpBindingConfig"
            />

        </client>
    </system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

windsor.config

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<castle>
    <components>

        ...

        <component
            id="AuthProvider"
            service="MyServices.Client.IAuthProvider, MyServices.Client"
            type="MyServices.Client.AuthProvider, MyServices.Client"
            lifestyle="transient">
            <parameters>
                <endpoint>#{AppSettings.AuthServiceEndPoint}</endpoint>
            </parameters>
        </component>

    </components>
</castle>

Is this possible?

---

Edit (a bit more information)

I already have the ability to access the AppSettings from my windsor.config file (which is actually processed by castle windsor and a custom XmlInterpreter.

The real question is can I do this in my web.config?

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
    <appSettings>
        <add key="AuthServiceEndPoint" value="any_old_name_i_like"/>
    </appSettings>
    <system.web>

    ...

    <system.serviceModel>
        <client>
            <endpoint
                address="net.tcp://localhost/AuthService"
                binding="netTcpBinding"
                contract="MyServices.Contracts.IAuthService"
                name="#{AppSettings.AuthServiceEndPoint}"
                bindingConfiguration="netTcpBindingConfig"
            />

        </client>
    </system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

ie – access variable in my <appSettings> from other parts of my web.config file.

Answer 1

Here I go answering my own question again :-S

I solved this by writing a NetTcpServiceLocator …

public interface INetTcpServiceLocator
{
    EndpointAddress GetAddress(Type serviceType);
}

… along with a custom config section handler which also implements the above interface and reads in the following config section …

<services>
    <service contract="My.Services.TestService.Contracts.ITestService" address="net.tcp://localhost/TestService" />
</services>

Then I created a proxy for each service …

public class TestServiceProxy : ITestService
{
    public SomeInformation GetSomeInformation(SomeParams @params)
    {
        using (var factory = new NetTcpServiceFactory<ITestService>())
        {
            var service = factory.Service;
            return service.GetSomeInformation(@params);
        }
    }
}

My Controller has a dependency on a Service, which has a dependancy on ITestService. All this is glued together with Castle Windsor and by using property dependency injection.

So, my controller calls it’s Service, which in turn calls the ITestService (in this case a proxy, which gets it’s endpoint from the custom section handler).

The custom section handler (which is also the INetTcpServiceLocator) has a windsor lifestyle of “perWebRequest”, so it gets called by the framework and web.config is read into an array in memory. When the service proxy is called, it then just pulls the relevant endpoint based on the contract type.

It’s all driven by the type of the contract, so there is no need to have any variables in web.config anymore.

I’ve gone for a code based solution, as I don’t use a build process locally, only when I submit my code to subversion does the build process kick in on our build server.