Connection String in the Application Configuration
File
Application
configuration files contain settings that are specific to a particular
application. For example, an ASP.NET application can have one or more web.config files, and a Windows
application can have an optional app.config
file. Connection strings can be stored as key/value pairs in the connectionStrings section of
the configuration
element of an application configuration file.
connectionStrings section
supports the <add>, <remove>, and <clear> tags.
<configuration>
<connectionStrings>
<clear />
<add name="myConnectionString"
connectionString="Data Source=mySQLServer;Initial
Catalog=myDatabase;User ID=myUserID;Password=myPassword"
providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
</connectionStrings>
</configuration>
In this example it first clears the list of connection settings then adds a new connection string setting called
myConnectionString. You can
access the connection strings in code by using the static ConnectionStrings collection on the
ConfigurationManager class (implemented in the System.Configuration.dll assembly).
Following code sample shows how to access Connection string in code:
String strConnectionString=
ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["myConnectionString"].ToString();
SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(strConnectionString);