Loading custom configuration files

Question

the articles posted by Ricky are very good, but unfortunately they don't answer your question.

To solve your problem you should try this piece of code:

ExeConfigurationFileMap configMap = new ExeConfigurationFileMap();
configMap.ExeConfigFilename = @"d:\test\justAConfigFile.config.whateverYouLikeExtension";
Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration(configMap, ConfigurationUserLevel.None);

If need to access a value within the config you can use the index operator:

config.AppSettings.Settings["test"].Value;

The config file is just an XML file, you can open it by:

private static XmlDocument loadConfigDocument()
{
    XmlDocument doc = null;
    try
    {
        doc = new XmlDocument();
        doc.Load(getConfigFilePath());
        return doc;
    }
    catch (System.IO.FileNotFoundException e)
    {
        throw new Exception("No configuration file found.", e);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        return null;
    }
}

and later retrieving values by:

    // retrieve appSettings node

    XmlNode node =  doc.SelectSingleNode("//appSettings");

I would use ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration.