Custom section/collection in Web.Config [duplicate]

Answer 1

If you don't want to create a class to represent your config section you can do this:

var configSection = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("sectionGroup/sectionName");
var aValue = (configSection as dynamic)["ValueKey"];

Converting to dynamic lets you access the key values in configSection. You may have to add a break point and peak in configSection to see what is there and what ValueKey to use.

Answer 2

Yes. And not too hard once you have a start.

You'll need to create a ConfigurationSection derived class to define the <routes> section (and then add a <section> to the configuration to link the <routes> element to your type).

You'll then need a type to define each element of the collection and, flagged as default, a property on your second type for the collection.

After all this is set up, at runtime you access your configuration section as:

var myRoutes = ConfigurationManager.GetSection("routes") as RoutesConfigSection;

My blog has a few articles on the background to this: http://blog.rjcox.co.uk/category/dev/net-core/

As noted in another answer there is also coverage (a lot better than it used to be) on MSDN.