How to define connection string for session state in Azure

Question

I am using the RedisSessionStateProvider using a procedimient like this https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/web-sites-dotnet-session-state-caching/

I define its connection string in web.config, in this example is XXXXXX.

 <system.web>
    <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.6.1" />
    <httpRuntime targetFramework="4.5" />
    <globalization culture="es-CO" uiCulture="es" />
    <customErrors mode="Off" />
    <sessionState mode="Custom" customProvider="SessionStateStore">
      <providers>
        <add name="SessionStateStore" type="Microsoft.Web.Redis.RedisSessionStateProvider" connectionString="XXXXXX" throwOnError="true" applicationName="NominappSession" />
      </providers>
    </sessionState>
  </system.web>

I dont want to put the connection string in the source code. So how can i using the settings in Azure to define this connection string?

I deploy to azure from github, so it uses Kudu. I dont have an external CI server.

Any advice please?

Answer 1

I did it :)

To do that you need to define the connection string as a environment variable, not as a typical connection string. And in the sesion state provide use the environment variable name.

This way:

  <appSettings>
    <add key="REDIS_CONNECTION_STRING" value="redis,allowAdmin=true" />
  </appSettings>
  <system.web>
    <sessionState mode="Custom" customProvider="SessionStateStore">
      <providers>
        <add name="SessionStateStore" type="Microsoft.Web.Redis.RedisSessionStateProvider" connectionString="REDIS_CONNECTION_STRING" applicationName="REDIS_SESSION_APPLICATION_NAME" throwOnError="true" />
      </providers>
    </sessionState>
  </system.web>

Using that you can now define the connection string in the App Settings of Azure WebSites

Answer 2

If you just want to be able to provide your connection string from your source code, you can use the settingsClassName and settingsMethodName properties in the config, like so:

 <sessionState mode="Custom" customProvider="RedisSessionStateStore">
  <providers>
      <add
        name="RedisSessionStateStore"
        type="Microsoft.Web.Redis.RedisSessionStateProvider"
        settingsClassName="MyApp.SessionStateRedisSettings,MyApp"
        settingsMethodName="ConnectionString" />
  </providers>

In here, the settingsClassName is the name of a class in your app, with its fully qualified namespace. The settingsMethod name is the name of the method on this class, which must be static, take 0 parameters and return an string. For example:

namespace MyApp
{
    public static class SessionStateRedisSettings
    {
        public static string ConnectionString()
        {
            return "ConnectionString goes here";
        }
    }
}

From here: https://github.com/Azure/aspnet-redis-providers/wiki/Configuration