Is there a quick and easy way to set a connection string in Web.Config to be the active connection string?
I basically want to name my connection strings appropriately and then set one as active without having to switch out the names or re-compile my application.
Something like this:
<add name="Current" connectionString="{Local}"/>
<add name="Local" connectionString=[...]" />
<add name="RemoteOnMyServer" connectionString=[...]" />
<add name="RemoteAzure" connectionString=[...]" />
I don't think that is possible the way you asked. But you can move the connection strings block to a separate file and then control which FILE is the active one:
<connectionStrings configSource="LocalDb.config"/>
Then you can have separate config files:
LocalDb.config
RemoteOnMyServer.config
RemoteAzure.config
<etc>
Each one of there would hold something like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<connectionStrings>
<add name="namedConnectionString" connectionString="Data Source=..." providerName="..." />
</connectionStrings>
Swithcing between them then becomes a matter of changing the configSource on the <connectionStrings /> element.
Scott Hanselman has a good article describing using different configurations for different environments using the build setting in the compiler. I've used this with great success in some of my projects.
