Skip to main content

All About Appsettings.json in ASP.NET Core 2.0

As most of you are aware that in ASP.Net Core, we don't have anything called Web.Config, where we use to write our connection strings or application specific settings. Rather, here we have the file named appsettings.json to store similar sort of information. There are few very common use cases where we need to maintain multiple appsettings.json file in a single solution. For example:
  • Multiple application settings per application - When we need to maintain different-different application specific settings based on the application environment. Say, one can have one type of application settings for Development, another type of application settings for Production, another one for Staging, and so on. Needless to mention, all the appsettings file will have different names.
  • To implement inheritance – If there are some common settings between multiple application settings file, in that case developer can come up with a base application settings file and on top of that specific file can be created. In that case, common information need not to be repeated in all the files.
If you are aware about the ASP.NET Core architecture, then you must agree on the point that, such scenarios can also be handled very easily in the ASP.Net Core as plugging multiple sources is very straight forward.
So, coming to the point. My this article is all about how to inherit or say read data from appsettings.json file which is outside my project. This scenario usually comes into the picture, when we are maintaining different project for holding all the shared resources, that has to be consumed across many projects in a given solution file. So, in the real world, one project can have its project specific settings as well as some common (or say global) settings which is placed outside its boundary.
Let me first tell something about my project structure. Here goes my solution structure:
As you can see in the above figure that 'CommonSettings.json' is the file which is kept outside of the main project named 'AllAboutConfigurations' and here is how my both the JSON files look like:

 appsettings.json:


{
  "Logging": {
                "IncludeScopes": false,
                "LogLevel": { "Default": "Warning" }





},



  "MySettings": { "PersonalizedSettings": " It's just for me" } 



}


CommonSettings.json:
{
  "MySettings": { "CommonSettings": "Hi, I'm common setting. Anyone can use me." }
}       
 
Now in order to read 'CommonSettings.json' in 'AllAboutConfigurations' project, I have to update the application configuration while constructing the web host as shown below:
 public static IWebHost BuildWebHost(string[] args) =>
            WebHost.CreateDefaultBuilder(args)
                .ConfigureAppConfiguration((webHostBuilderContext, configurationbuilder) =>
                {
                    var environment = webHostBuilderContext.HostingEnvironment;
                    string pathOfCommonSettingsFile = Path.Combine(environment.ContentRootPath,"..","Common");
                    configurationbuilder
                            .AddJsonFile("appSettings.json", optional: true)
                            .AddJsonFile(Path.Combine(pathOfCommonSettingsFile, "CommonSettings.json"), optional: true);

                    configurationbuilder.AddEnvironmentVariables();
                })
                .UseStartup()
                .Build();

Now if we want to see something on our web page, we have to update UI code too. Let's make it simple with just few lines of code as shown below:

@using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
@inject IConfiguration configuration;

@{
    Layout = null;
}




<html>
<head>
    
    <title>Settings</title>
</head>
<body>
        Personalized Settings: @configuration.GetSection("MySettings")["PersonalizedSettings"]<br />



        Common Settings: @configuration.GetSection("MySettings")["CommonSettings"]<br />



</body>
</html>
 

Now if you will run your application, you will be able to see that both the settings are considered as part of single project.











Happy Learning!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment