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I'm wondering whether it's possible to use built in ASP.NET application services (aspnet_user, aspnet_role etc table) without specifying a connection string in a web.config.

At the moment I store connection strings externally, but I keep finding hard-coded connection strings all over the web.config xml, various providers etc. It's driving me crazy.

Thank you

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Just a note: the concepts "hard-coded" and "data in a web.config" are mutually exclusive. Hard-Coded means that the information is stored inside the actual code, requiring a recompile to change. Putting data in a config file is the way to avoid "hard coding" information. Just semantics ;) – Chris Lively Jun 17 '10 at 19:31
Thanks for the feedback. I'll rephrase myself. What I was trying to say is that I don't like the application services adding connection strings into various config files "automatically". – CodeWorks Jun 18 '10 at 8:53

1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

You can write your own provider via overriding already existed, built-in class so it will read it's connection string from somewhere else:

public class MyMembershiProvider : SqlMembershiProvider
{
    public override void Initialize(string name, NameValueCollection config)
    {
        config["connectionString"] = "what ever you want";

        base.Initialize(name, config);
    }
}
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Hey, thank you for this. This still means that application will look for different configuration files depending whether it's a web.config it's after or app.config. On top of this I have unit tests which seem to be using a conncetion string of their own. LINQ to SQL had connection strings built in some configuration files - I removed those. At the moment my main concern is asp net data providers. – CodeWorks Jun 18 '10 at 8:54
Spasibo za sovet %) – CodeWorks Jun 18 '10 at 8:56
@vikp: So you want to minimize the number of connection strings used in the application? You can specify not connectionString but connectionStringName so it will read it appropriate connection string from Web.config/connectionStrings node. Рад помочь! :) – abatishchev Jun 18 '10 at 9:44
@vikp: Also you can use special class to hold (manage) your connection string(s). I do so. public static class Database { public static SqlConnection GetConnection() { } } which holds your connection string(s) or reads them from Web.config or anywhere else – abatishchev Jun 18 '10 at 10:02
Sorry for the late reply. Was away. Yes I'd like to minimise the number of places where I store the connection strings. I'm not too keen on web.config or app.config. In my opinion too many things are done for you behind the scenes, which I don't like. I will use a helper class which will read the connection strings from encrypted XML config. Hopefully overhead of reading data from encrypted xml config file won't be too big. Thanks a lot! – CodeWorks Jun 24 '10 at 11:54

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