Can't read keys from App.config

Question

I want to read some values from my project's App.config file, but when I do this:

var appsettings = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings;

I only get four entries: StopTestRunCallTimeoutInSeconds, LogSizeLimitInMegs, CreateTraceListener and GetCollectorDataTimeout, which aren't even listed in the XML. My keys username and password do not even appear.

My App.Config looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <startup>
    <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5" />
  </startup>
  <appSettings>
    <add key="username" value="Administrator" />
    <add key="password" value="password" />
  </appSettings>
  <system.web>
    <membership defaultProvider="ClientAuthenticationMembershipProvider">
      <providers>
        <add name="ClientAuthenticationMembershipProvider" type="System.Web.ClientServices.Providers.ClientFormsAuthenticationMembershipProvider, System.Web.Extensions, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" serviceUri="" />
      </providers>
    </membership>
    <roleManager defaultProvider="ClientRoleProvider" enabled="true">
      <providers>
        <add name="ClientRoleProvider" type="System.Web.ClientServices.Providers.ClientRoleProvider, System.Web.Extensions, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" serviceUri="" cacheTimeout="86400" />
      </providers>
    </roleManager>
  </system.web>
</configuration>

Am I missing something? It seems to me like I was reading from a totally different config file, but there is no other one.

Answer 1

I found the solution! The problem was, that I debugged a unit test, which was located in a different sub-project within the same solution. I copied the app.config file to the same project as the unit test and it works fine now. thanks for your help!

Answer 2

you can read your application settings by pulling them by name

var username = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["username"]
var password = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["password"]

The underlying data type of AppSettings is NameValueCollection. So you pull the value based on the key.

Here is the documentation for AppSettings which shows an example http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.configuration.configurationmanager.appsettings.aspx