How to configure database connection string in one place

[MPeccorini]

Hi fellows,

I'm starting to develop web based applications with ASP.NET, I have several pages and, as each page has it's own OleDbConnection control, the connection string is specified in every page.

I would like to allow the user to set the database connection string to use in a configuration page. I tried putting the connection string in a file and reading on application startup. It worked fairly well, however some databinding properties are no longer displayed correctly due to the connection string not being set in the object as string but as a function execution.

What is the best way to do what I want?

Thanks a lot,

Mauricio Peccorini

 

[Beeps]

In the web.config file add

<appSettings>
		<add key = "DBConn" 
		value = "Provider = Microsoft.Jet.OLeDB.4.0; data source=C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\[appName]\[DatabaseName].mdb;"/>
</appSettings>

after the </system.web> tag.

Then all you have to do create the connection string anywhere in your app is:

Dim strConn As String = ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings("DbConn")

 

[MPeccorini]

I have done that and it works pretty well in runtime. However, in design time it does not show the lists of allowed values in the databinding related properties.

Is there no other way?