.NET & XML

System.Configuration Namespace Reference

The System.Configuration namespace contains classes that are used to read the contents of the hierarchy of .NET Framework configuration files. The main workhorse of the System.Configuration namespace is the ConfigurationSettings class, whose staticAppSettings property provides access to a collection of key-value pairs in the appSettings section of the configuration files, and whose GetConfig( ) method provides access to other, custom configuration sections. Another class, AppSettingsReader, enables typesafe access to configuration settings.

The appSettings configuration section may contain add, remove, and clear elements. add causes a key-value pair to be added to the configuration system. remove causes a key-value pair to be removed from the configuration system. clear causes any key-value pairs already in the configuration system to be removed. The configuration files themselves are not affected, only the key-value pairs in memory for an application instance.

Custom configuration sections may be added using the section element. Each section element specifies the name of the configuration section and the name of a type that implements IConfigurationSectionHandler to handle the configuration section.

This namespace contains several classes which, although public, are reserved for internal use by the .NET Framework. No documentation is included in this quick reference for those classes. Figure 15-1 shows the types in this namespace.