Question

I’m currently using CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("setting") to get settings for my application, but it’s writing logs of everything it’s checking to the console (in both Debug and Release):

Getting "setting" from ServiceRuntime: FAIL.
Getting "setting" from ConfigurationManager: PASS (Data Source=...
Getting "setting" from ServiceRuntime: FAIL.
Getting "setting" from ConfigurationManager: PASS (Data Source=...

Is there any way to prevent it from doing this, or an alternative version that’s less verbose?

Mostly I just like my unit test output to be nice and clean, but I’m also a little concerned that it’s printing out things like connection strings (and hence passwords) in plain text on the production server.

Answer 1

Not really. If you look at the code of the underlying GetValue method you’ll see this:

private static string GetValue(string providerName, string settingName, Func<string, string> getValue)
{
  string str1 = getValue(settingName);
  string str2;
  if (str1 != null)
    str2 = string.Format((IFormatProvider) CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, "PASS ({0})", new object[1]
    {
      (object) str1
    });
  else
    str2 = "FAIL";
  Trace.WriteLine(string.Format((IFormatProvider) CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, "Getting \"{0}\" from {1}: {2}.", (object) settingName, (object) providerName, (object) str2));
  return str1;
}

The Trace.WriteLine is always called without taking into account Debug or Release. Now you can simply remove the Default listener which should suppress all messages:

  <system.diagnostics>
    <trace>
      <listeners>
        <remove name="Default" />
      </listeners>
    </trace>
  </system.diagnostics>

Now if you look at the CloudConfigurationManager it doesn’t do that much. If this is a problem for you you can cook up something yourself, starting with this:

        if (RoleEnvironment.IsAvailable)
            return RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue(setting);
        else
            return ConfigurationManager.AppSettings[setting];

Note: The CloudConfigurationManager does a lot more than this, like loading the assembly without assembly reference.