Avoid web.config inheritance in child web application using inheritInChildApplications

Question

I am trying to add

<location inheritInChildApplications="false">

to my parent web application's web.config but it doesn't seem to be working.

My parent's web.config has:

<configuration>
    <configSections>
    </configSections>

    // 10 or so custom config sections like log4net, hibernate,

    <connectionStrings>
    </connectionStrings>

    <appSettings>
    </appSettings>

    <system.diagnostics>
    </system.diagnostics>

    <system.web>
         <webParts>
         </webParts>
         <membership>
         </membership>

         <compilation>
         </compilation>
    </system.web>

    <location ..>
    <system.web>
        </system.web>
    </location>

    <system.webServer>
    </system.webServer>

My child web application is setup as an application in IIS, and is inheriting from the parent's web.config which is causing problems.

Where exactly should I place the

<location inheritInChildApplications="false">

so it ignores all the various web.config settings?

Answer 1

As the commenters for the previous answer mentioned, you cannot simply add the line...

<location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false">

...just below <configuration>. Instead, you need to wrap the individual web.config sections for which you want to disable inheritance. For example:

<!-- disable inheritance for the connectionStrings section -->
<location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false">
   <connectionStrings>
   </connectionStrings>
</location>

<!-- leave inheritance enabled for appSettings -->
<appSettings>
</appSettings>

<!-- disable inheritance for the system.web section -->
<location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false">
   <system.web>
        <webParts>
        </webParts>
        <membership>
        </membership>

        <compilation>
        </compilation>
      </system.web>
 </location>

While <clear /> may work for some configuration sections, there are some that instead require a <remove name="..."> directive, and still others don't seem to support either. In these situations, it's probably appropriate to set inheritInChildApplications="false".