This class provides a Configuration Settings persistance manager. You can use it to store application configuration settings easily simply by creating a subclass with persistance to a configuration file taken care of automatically. It provides the following features:

• Type Safe access to configuration settings - simply add properties to a class
  
• Default values applied to config file. Never worry about null values
  
• Support for writing to sections and separate config files
  
• Support for writing to a Sql Server Table
  
• Optional encryption of selected keys
  
• Ability to write keys back into config file
  

You implement a configuration object by creating a new subclass of the wwAppConfiguration class and adding public Fields or Properties to the class. Every new member you add will be persisted to the application's .Config file. On first use the class also writes out default values into the .Config file so the data is always there. The data is always returned in a fully typed manner - you simply reference the properties of this object.

Values are stored in the AppSettings section of the .Config file by default and uses ApplicationSettings to internally retrieve this data. You can use SetConfigurationSection() to specify a different section in the file. The data is always returned in the proper type format rather than as string and null instances are never a problem as there will always be a default value returned. This reduces the amount of code that goes along with pulling data out of the .Config file.

Supported fields type are any simple types (string, decimal, double, int, boolean, datetime etc. ) as well as enums. Enums are persisted into the front end interface using strings (ie. if you use it in a listbox value the value must be string).

The class also provides the ability to encrypt keys by calling the SetEncryption() method with a list of keys and a password.

Namespace: Westwind.Tools
Inherits: Object