Updating variables in web.config outside appSettings

Question

I need to update values in web.config in Azure TFS. I am able to get the value for connectionString replaced which is part of the appSettings (for this to work, I needed to enable the setting named XML variable substitution (under IIS Web Deploy).

However, there are other areas within web.config which do not get replaced.

I have tried several different approaches, using different tasks for token replacement, using the "Release" or "Environment" setting for variables, using variable groups. However, none of these worked.

Currently I am using the Replace tokens task (available at https://github.com/qetza/vsts-replacetokens-task#readme )

I have set the Token Prefix and Suffix to __ (to match with what is web.config)

Here is an extract of the web.config file

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
    <appSettings>
        <add key="ConnectionString" value="__ConnectionString__"/>
    </appSettings>
    <system.web>
        <pages theme="__Theme__" controlRenderingCompatibilityVersion="3.5" clientIDMode="AutoID">
            <controls>
                <add tagPrefix="asp" namespace="System.Web.UI" assembly="System.Web.Extensions, Version=1.0.61025.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
            </controls>
        </pages>
    </system.web>
    <system.serviceModel>       
        <serviceHostingEnvironment multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true"/>
        <bindings>
            <customBinding>
                <binding name="TestBinding1">
                    <textMessageEncoding maxReadPoolSize="64" maxWritePoolSize="16" messageVersion="Soap12" writeEncoding="utf-8">
                        <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="8192" maxArrayLength="16384" maxBytesPerRead="4096" maxNameTableCharCount="16384" />
                    </textMessageEncoding>
                    <httpsTransport manualAddressing="false" maxBufferPoolSize="524288" maxReceivedMessageSize="65536" allowCookies="false" authenticationScheme="Anonymous" bypassProxyOnLocal="false" decompressionEnabled="true" hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard" keepAliveEnabled="true" maxBufferSize="65536" proxyAuthenticationScheme="Anonymous" realm="" transferMode="Buffered" unsafeConnectionNtlmAuthentication="false" useDefaultWebProxy="true" requireClientCertificate="false" />
                </binding>
            </customBinding>
            __basicHttpBindingOptionalBinding__
        </bindings>
        <client>
            <endpoint address="__TestEndPoint__" binding="customBinding" bindingConfiguration="TestBinding1" contract="BSEInspectionsWebServiceForFDA.StateDataTransfer" name="StateDataTransferPort" />
            __endpointOptionalEndpoint__
        </client>
    </system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

I expect only blank lines for basicHttpBindingOptionalBinding and endpointOptionalEndpoint. The Theme needs to be replaced with TestTheme and TestEndPoint needs to be set with the value defined in variables.

Answer 1

Add a parameters.xml to your project, as described here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/web-forms/overview/deployment/web-deployment-in-the-enterprise/configuring-parameters-for-web-package-deployment

specify parameter there, for example, "myEndpointAddress".

Then in IIS Web Deploy Task use additional arguments to pass the value -setParam:name='myEndPointAddress',value='new_value'