Question

I’m a newbie at SharePoint 2010. I right-click on the project, select Deploy if I want to deploy locally. The Site URL on the project is set to my local machine. If I want to deploy to the QA server, I select Deploy, navigate to the Debug/Release folder, grab the .wsp file, logon to the Central Administration on QA, retract the solution, then do Add-SPsolution <path to wsp file> through powershell, go back to Central Admin, the click on Deploy solution for that package. Works fine.

The web.config on my local machine has a custom connection string, and appsettings. When I deploy the package on the QA server, I’m manually changing the connection string and appsettings specific to QA. I want to automate this process. I want the web.config to be part of the package with it’s own custom connecting string (one for local, one for QA, and for Production) and appsettings. How do I do it? The goal is on a new machine, I should be able to deploy the wsp and appsettings+web.config should all be correct without modifying anything manually. How do I accomplish this?

Answer 1

I am pretty sure web.config modifications can’t be done with just package files / CAML.

However, what can be done is to deploy a WebApplication Feature Reciever which modifies the web.config through SPWebApplication.WebConfigModifications.

Here is a snippet of code from my project, see the the Code Project KB for more details: (This first bit is just a handy function with some notes.)

// For WebConfigModifications access,
// see http://www.codeproject.com/KB/sharepoint/SPWebConfigModTool.aspx
// Hints:
// app.WebConfigModifications.Add(new SPWebConfigModification
//    {
//        Type =     [add/update child node?]
//        Path =     [XPath of parent node]
//        Name =     [XPath to identify child node UNIQUELY]
//        Owner =    [Use GUID to identify as ours]
//        Sequence = [Sequence number, likely 0 for only one]
//        Value =    [XML node to add/update]
//    });
void ModfiyWebConfig (SPWebApplication app, string path, string name, XElement node)
{
    app.WebConfigModifications.Add(new SPWebConfigModification
    {
        Type = SPWebConfigModificationType.EnsureChildNode,
        Path = path,
        Name = name,
        Owner = OwnerId,
        Sequence = 0,
        Value = node.ToString(),
    });
}

Get/init SPWebApplication

var app = properties.Feature.Parent as SPWebApplication;

Queue/setup modifications

ModfiyWebConfig(app,
            "configuration/system.webServer/modules",
            "add[@name='ASPxHttpHandlerModule']",
            new XElement("add",
                new XAttribute("name", "ASPxHttpHandlerModule"),
                new XAttribute("type", aspxHandlerModule)));

Apply modifications

app.WebService.ApplyWebConfigModifications();
app.Update();