Hi,

I found this answer about external configuration files. I'm trying to do a similar thing. I have a small webapplication called StatsGen I want to include in other projects, and for convenience I'd like to have the settings inside the bin folder, in a config file with an appropriate name, in my case: StatsGen.config. So I've put these line in the web.config (as explained in the answer I mentioned above):

<configSections>
  <section name="StatsGenSettings" restartOnExternalChanges="true" type="System.Configuration.NameValueFileSectionHandler" />
  <!--sectionGroups-->
</configSections>

<StatsGenSettings configSource="StatsGen.config"></StatsGenSettings>

<!--and here comes the rest... appSettings etc.-->

Inside the bin folder, I created a StatsGen.xml file, then renamed it to StatsGen.config. It looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<StatsGenSettings>
<add key="Password" value="myStatsPass" />
<add key="ConnectionString" value="Server=mydbsrv;Database=myDB;User ID=myUser;Password=myPass" />
</StatsGenSettings>

I created an Helper class, as suggested in the answer.

In the Page_Load of my default.aspx.cs file, I've put: goodPassword = StatsGenSettings.Instance["Password"];

When I load my page, I get this error:

The type initializer for 'StatsGen.Helpers.StatsGenSettings' threw an exception.

I've tried to exlude the helper and just to get access to the key, like this:

NameValueCollection _settings = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("StatsGenSettings") as NameValueCollection;

And I get this error:

Unable to open configSource file 'StatsGen.config'. (C:\Users\pbo\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\StatsGen\StatsGen\web.config line 21)

At line 21 I just have this, as explained above:

<StatsGenSettings configSource="StatsGen.config"></StatsGenSettings>

So now I'm wondering, what's wrong? Some detailed help would be cool... like: where exactly should I declare the StatsGenSettings element inside the web.config? It was not specified in the answer I've found... or what else am I doing wrong?

Thanks for letting me know...