Encrypting custom sections of a web.config

Question

I used the article Creating a Flexible Configuration Section Handler to create a Flexible Configuration Section Handler in my application.

I also saw this article entitled Encrypting Custom Configuration Sections on the OdeToCode blog, on how to encrypt portions of a web.config file.

From the first article, we have this web.config code.

<?xmlversion="1.0"encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
    <configSections>
        <sectionname="StyleSheetSettings_1"    
            type="FifteenSeconds.Core.BasicConfigurator"/>
    </configSections>
    <StyleSheetSettings_1>
        <StyleSheets>
            <Style SheetName="Page"Href="Styles/Page.css"Media="screen"/>
            <StyleSheetName="Custom"Href="Styles/Custom.css"Media="screen"/>
            <StyleSheetName="Print"Href="/Lib/Styles/Print.css"Media="print"/>
        </StyleSheets>      
    </StyleSheetSettings_1>
 </configuration>

I tried to use the following code to encrypt the code using something like the following command line code.

 aspnet_regiis.exe -pef  "StyleSheetSettings_1" C:\Test\

I am getting the following error

Could not load type FifteenSeconds.Core.BasicConfigurator' from assembly 'System.Web, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a'.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Here's another workaround for this issue (found at http://www.dotnetnoob.com/2013/01/how-to-encrypt-custom-configuration.html). Comment out the section element for the custom section under the configSections element (/configuration/configSections) before running the aspnet_regiis command and the custom section should get encrypted.

<configSections>
    <!--<section name="myCustomSection" type="My.Product.CustomSection, My.Product.Assembly/>-->
</configSections>


c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319>aspnet_regiis -pef myCustomSection C:\path\to\app
Microsoft (R) ASP.NET RegIIS version 4.0.30319.17929
Administration utility to install and uninstall ASP.NET on the local machine.
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.
Encrypting configuration section...
Succeeded!