Storing values in the web.config - appSettings or configSection - which is more efficient?

Question

I\'m writing a page that can use a couple of different themes, and I\'m going to store some information about each theme in the web.config.

Is it more efficient to cre

Answer 1

For more complex configuration setup, I would use a custom configuration section that clearly defines the roles of each section for example

In your configuration class you can expose your properties with something like

public class MonitoringConfig : ConfigurationSection
{
  [ConfigurationProperty("smtp", IsRequired = true)]
  public string Smtp
  {
    get { return this["smtp"] as string; }
  }
  public static MonitoringConfig GetConfig()
  {
    return ConfigurationManager.GetSection("appMonitoring") as MonitoringConfig
  }
}

You can then access configuration properties in the following way from your code

string smtp = MonitoringConfig.GetConfig().Smtp;