Question

In a .Net 3.5 (Windows) service, I would like to store a small collection of values in the config file. Basically, I need to allow admins to add and remove values from this small collection. What do I need to add to the config file to store a collection of small values, and how can I read the collection in C#?

To clarify, the collection I am looking for is data like this:

<Illegal Characters>
  <CustomCollection value="?"/>
  <CustomCollection value="#"/>
  <CustomCollection value=","/>
</Illegal Characters>

Answer 1

There’s a good article on creating a custom configuration section handler that loads the values as a list here.

Basically your IConfigurationSectionHandler‘s Create method should look something like this:

public object Create(object parent, object configContext, XmlNode section)
{
    IList<string> illegal = new List<string>();
    XmlNodeList processesNodes= section.SelectNodes("CustomCollection");

    foreach (XmlNode child in processesNodes)
    {
        illegal.Add(child.Attributes["value"].InnerText);
    }
    return illegal;
}