How to store string with html content in appsettings

Question

I've written some email code and I'm required to send all emails with a signature.

I was asked to store the signature in the appsettings of the web.config file.

I'm not sure if this is the correct place. Can someone advise me otherwise? As far as I know there is only going to be one email signature in there.

I tried:

<appSettings>
<add key="CompanyEmailSignature" value="The Biscuit Factory\n\r
        Somewhere in the Bahamas\n\r
        <a href="http://www.thebiscuitfactory.com">The Biscuit Factory</a>\n\r
        Our mission is to make tasty biscuits" />

    </appSettings>

I'm unsure however how to escape for the link. I had a look at some suggestions and tried:

<a href=""http://www.thebiscuitfactory.com"">The Biscuit Factory</a>

and I tried:

<a href=\"http://www.thebiscuitfactory.com\">The Biscuit Factory</a>

but couldn't get it to work.

Can anyone tell me how to escape this and also if there is somewhere else this would be better stored?

Answer 1

Did you already try changing < and > into < and > ?

< and > are not allowed inside an xml (appsettings) attribute.

Also for the " you can try using "

So in the end you have this:

<appSettings>
<add key="CompanyEmailSignature" value="
    The Biscuit Factory\n\r
    Somewhere in the Bahamas\n\r
    &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebiscuitfactory.com&quot;&gt;The Biscuit Factory&lt;/a&gt;\n\r
    Our mission is to make tasty biscuits
" />
</appSettings>