Dynamically generate app configuration as part of CI

We have many environments and thinking of creating dynamic application configuration as p开发者_如何学JAVAart of CI. The configuration values will be stored in Database using WPF. Operation team manages the app for new app config entries.

The problem I am facing is how can I dynamically create the config and validate it? Opinions..? Thanks in advance.

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If the number of configurations is finite and known (test, UAT, production desktop, production mobile, etc), you can take advantage of the configSource attribute found on the AppSettings, ConnectionStrings and ConfigSection elements. Here's the basic premise; create an AppSettings.xyz.config file for each configuration, where xyz is the name of the configuration ("local" "test", "uat", "prod", etc). Create a single app.config file that uses a <!ENTITY config "xyz"> definition, and has configSource attributes for various sections set similar to:

<appsettings configSource="appSettings.&config.config">

Now, in deployment logic, you change one thing; the string literal defined by the entity. This change is simple enough that you don't even really need XML parsing to make the change; just slurp the file into memory with a FileStream, find the entity definition, make the change and spit the new content back out into the file. If you're using an installer, you can control which child configs are installed, or just put them all out there for simplicity.

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Take a look at T4. You can create a skeleton .config file with certain variables that are filled from the database to generate the environment-specific file.