The Last Configuration Handler I'll Ever Need

Here. From Craig Andera: I'm sure someone, somewhere has already written this, but I figured it out on my own today, and it's just too cool not to share. Basically, it's a bit of code that lets me store objects in my application or web configuration file, and all I have to do is write the type that holds the values.

Very elegant -- I like it! This is one of those things where you slap yourself on the head and say "of course!"

Thanks! I thought so too. That's why I said, "I'm sure someone must have written this already..." :)

That's cool, Craig. Does it come with a utility that tells you the format of the XML to put into the .config for your custom type?

Geez, Chris, what do you want from me? :)

I'll see what I can whip up.

I didn't have time to explore what it would take to spit out example XML given an arbitrary type, so I thought of a cheesy way to do it. It's based on the fact that ASMX web services use the same XML serialization engine that I do.

* Write the type you want to store.
* Write a simple ASMX web service that has one method that has a single input parameter of that type.
* Navigate to the ASMX-generated HTML page for the web service, and click on the link for that operation.
* Go look in the sample SOAP message - you should see your type expressed as XML.
* Cut and paste into your config file, adding the "type" attribute.

How's that, Chris?

How do you extend this solution to incorporate repetitive items?
 i.e
    (Foo name=”A”)1.234(/Foo)
    (Foo name=”B”)5.678(/Foo)