Setting multiple SMTP settings in web.config?

Question

I am building an app that needs to dynamically/programatically know of and use different SMTP settings when sending email.

I'm used to using the system.net/mailSettings approach, but as I understand it, that only allows one SMTP connection definition at a time, used by SmtpClient().

However, I need more of a connectionStrings-like approach, where I can pull a set of settings based on a key/name.

Any recommendations? I'm open to skipping the tradintional SmtpClient/mailSettings approach, and I think will have to...

Answer 1

I needed to have different smtp configurations in the web.config depending on the environment: dev, staging and production.

Here's what I ended up using:

In web.config:

<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <sectionGroup name="mailSettings">
      <section name="smtp_1" type="System.Net.Configuration.SmtpSection"/>
      <section name="smtp_2" type="System.Net.Configuration.SmtpSection"/>
      <section name="smtp_3" type="System.Net.Configuration.SmtpSection"/>
    </sectionGroup>
  </configSections>
  <mailSettings>
    <smtp_1 deliveryMethod="Network" from="[email protected]">
      <network host="..." defaultCredentials="false"/>
    </smtp_1>
    <smtp_2 deliveryMethod="Network" from="[email protected]">
      <network host="1..." defaultCredentials="false"/>
    </smtp_2>
    <smtp_3 deliveryMethod="Network" from="[email protected]">
      <network host="..." defaultCredentials="false"/>
    </smtp_3>
  </mailSettings>
</configuration>

Then in code:

return (SmtpSection)ConfigurationManager.GetSection("mailSettings/smtp_1");
return (SmtpSection)ConfigurationManager.GetSection("mailSettings/smtp_2");
return (SmtpSection)ConfigurationManager.GetSection("mailSettings/smtp_3");