By: John Kilgo Date: November 28, 2002 Download the code. Printer Friendly Version
Here we present an example of how to store a database connection string in the application's Web.Config file. Web.Config is a part of every asp.net application and provides a nice, central location for storing information that may be needed in many of your web pages. This first bit of code is just an .aspx file. The code for accessing the connection string is located in the associated .vb code-behind file shown immediately after the .aspx code.
<% ' Program: ConnString.aspx ' By: John Kilgo ' Date: November 28, 2002 ' CodeBehind: ConnString.aspx.vb ' Purpose: Demonstrates using Web.Config to hold a connection string ' and reading that string from a program %> <%@ Page Inherits="ConnString" Src="ConnString.aspx.vb" %> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <title>ConnString</title> <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 7.0"> <meta name="CODE_LANGUAGE" content="Visual Basic 7.0"> <meta name="vs_defaultClientScript" content="JavaScript"> <meta name="vs_targetSchema" content="http://schemas.microsoft.com/intellisense/ie5"> </HEAD> <BODY MS_POSITIONING="GridLayout"> <form id="Form1" runat="server"> <asp:DataGrid id="dataGrid" AutoGenerateColumns="False" runat="server"> <Columns> <asp:BoundColumn HeaderText="Company Name" DataField="CompanyName" /> <asp:BoundColumn HeaderText="Contact Name" DataField="ContactName" /> <asp:BoundColumn HeaderText="Contact Title" DataField="ContactTitle" /> </Columns> </asp:DataGrid> </form> </BODY> </HTML> |
Web.Config (shown after the .vb code) contains a key-value pair which specifies a key of "ConnectionString" with a value which is the connection string. We set a string variable ("strConnection") equal to ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings("ConnectionString"). We have now captured the connection string for use in our program.
Imports System Imports System.Web Imports System.Web.UI Imports System.Web.UI.WebControls Imports System.Data Imports System.Data.SqlClient Imports System.Configuration Public Class ConnString : Inherits Page Protected dataGrid As DataGrid Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal Sender As Object, ByVal E As EventArgs) Dim sqlConn As SqlConnection Dim sqlCmd As SqlCommand Dim strConnection As String Try 'Get connection string from Web.Config strConnection = ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings("ConnectionString") sqlConn = New SqlConnection(strConnection) sqlCmd = New SqlCommand("SELECT * FROM Customers WHERE " _ & "(CompanyName LIKE 'A%') OR (CompanyName LIKE 'B%')", sqlConn) sqlConn.Open() dataGrid.DataSource = sqlCmd.ExecuteReader() dataGrid.DataBind() Catch ex As Exception Response.Write(ex.ToString & "<br>") Finally sqlConn.Close() End Try End Sub End Class |
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <!-- Web.Config Configuration File --> <configuration> <appSettings> <add key="ConnectionString" value="server=localhost;database=Northwind;uid=sa;password=secret;" /> </appSettings> <system.web> <customErrors mode="Off"/> </system.web> </configuration> |