C# – SharePoint 2010 – Creating a supplemental web.config file

csharepointsharepoint-2010

I'm currently developing a new feature for SharePoint 2010. Along with the deployment of my feature I would like to add some settings to the <appSettings/> section within my SharePoint applications web.config.

I found some information on MSDN regarding adding supplemental .config files during deployment, but I have not been able to get this to work. This approach seemed the cleanest to me since I can have all my changes within a single file and have them deployed with the rest of my application.

I've created a webconfig.MyApp.xml file as suggested in the documentation, deployed it to the <SharePoint 14 hive>\Config folder, but my changes are not being propagated to my applications web.config.

Below is a sample snippet from my supplemental config file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<actions>
    <add path="configuration/appSettings">
        <add key="MyFeatureKey" value="MyFeatureValue" />
    </add>
</actions>

I would like to avoid having to manually edit the web.config since those changes can easily be lost during SharePoint maintenance, etc.

If you have any ideas on an alternate maintainable approach to deploying web.config changes, my ears are open.

UPDATE:
The answers that have been given so far are great and I'm sure they will work. But I'm looking for a solution that can be packaged up within my single WSP and deployed without any additional steps required.

Best Answer

As Russ and breischl suggest, you can make use of the WebConfigModifications property of the SPWebApplication object. To deploy this together with your feature, put your code in a feature receiver. That way, you can make the web.config modifications automatically when the feature is installed.

In your feature receiver, don't forget to call the ApplyWebConfigModifications() property on your SPWebApplication object.

Example: http://weblogs.asp.net/wesleybakker/archive/2009/01/21/web.config-modifications-with-a-sharepoint-feature.aspx

You can package both your feature and your feature receiver assembly in a single wsp package.

Related Solutions

C# – How to create an Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file in C# without installing Microsoft Office

You can use a library called ExcelLibrary. It's a free, open source library posted on Google Code:

ExcelLibrary

This looks to be a port of the PHP ExcelWriter that you mentioned above. It will not write to the new .xlsx format yet, but they are working on adding that functionality in.

It's very simple, small and easy to use. Plus it has a DataSetHelper that lets you use DataSets and DataTables to easily work with Excel data.

ExcelLibrary seems to still only work for the older Excel format (.xls files), but may be adding support in the future for newer 2007/2010 formats.

You can also use EPPlus, which works only for Excel 2007/2010 format files (.xlsx files). There's also NPOI which works with both.

There are a few known bugs with each library as noted in the comments. In all, EPPlus seems to be the best choice as time goes on. It seems to be more actively updated and documented as well.

Also, as noted by @АртёмЦарионов below, EPPlus has support for Pivot Tables and ExcelLibrary may have some support (Pivot table issue in ExcelLibrary)

Here are a couple links for quick reference:
ExcelLibrary - GNU Lesser GPL
EPPlus - GNU (LGPL) - No longer maintained
EPPlus 5 - Polyform Noncommercial - Starting May 2020
NPOI - Apache License

Here some example code for ExcelLibrary:

Here is an example taking data from a database and creating a workbook from it. Note that the ExcelLibrary code is the single line at the bottom:

//Create the data set and table
DataSet ds = new DataSet("New_DataSet");
DataTable dt = new DataTable("New_DataTable");

//Set the locale for each
ds.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
dt.Locale = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;

//Open a DB connection (in this example with OleDB)
OleDbConnection con = new OleDbConnection(dbConnectionString);
con.Open();

//Create a query and fill the data table with the data from the DB
string sql = "SELECT Whatever FROM MyDBTable;";
OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(sql, con);
OleDbDataAdapter adptr = new OleDbDataAdapter();

adptr.SelectCommand = cmd;
adptr.Fill(dt);
con.Close();

//Add the table to the data set
ds.Tables.Add(dt);

//Here's the easy part. Create the Excel worksheet from the data set
ExcelLibrary.DataSetHelper.CreateWorkbook("MyExcelFile.xls", ds);

Creating the Excel file is as easy as that. You can also manually create Excel files, but the above functionality is what really impressed me.

SharePoint 2010 – Access denied during ApplyWebConfigModifications()

Check whether UAC (User Account Control) is on and turn it off if this is a test/demo environment. The other option (and the best option for Production environments) is to right click the central admin link and choose the option to 'Run as Administrator'.

I got burnt by this for a little while and the reason is because of the way the security check is performed before the solution deployment job runs. If you are running with UAC enabled then this check will always fail (see the Remarks section on MSDN for system.security.principal.windowsprincipal).

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – How to create an Excel (.XLS and .XLSX) file in C# without installing Microsoft Office

SharePoint 2010 – Access denied during ApplyWebConfigModifications()

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