Change connection string from development to production when publishing

Question

I want to know how to change automatically the connection string of my app so when I'm working on it in my pc, it uses my local SQL Server and once I publish it then uses the SQL Server I have hosted on azure.

Right now I'm just commenting out the connection string depending of what I want, I saw that the Web.Config file has 2 dependencies, Web.Debug.config and Web.Release.config which is where I guess I have to do something but I don't know what.

This is my web.config file so far

<connectionStrings>
    <add name="MyApp" connectionString="Data Source=mydb.database.windows.net;Initial Catalog=MyDb;User [email protected];Password=MyPwd;Encrypt=true;Trusted_Connection=false;" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
  <!--<add name="MyApp" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" connectionString="Server=.\SQLEXPRESS;Database=MyDb;Integrated Security=True;" />-->
  </connectionStrings

As you can see I have 2 connection strings that I have comment out but doing this is really annoying.

Answer 1

The two configs are built for their respective build setting, so you can put your dev connection string in Web.Debug.config and your prod connection string in Web.Release.config. Then, when you deploy to production, run a Release build and your resulting Web.Config will have the production connection string.

Answer 2

you can split your web.config like

• web.dev.config
• web.live.config

At deployment time choose appropriate config file. You can visit this link to learn how to manage multiple web.config file in single project.

OR

If you don't want to create multiple web.config files refer Single web.config file across all environments (dev, test, prod) from codeproject

Answer 3

You can now use Azure to handle this exact problem through their connection strings within app settings. You just need to name the connections exactly the same and then it will plug and play.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/app-service-web/web-sites-configure