What's the difference between the WebConfigurationManager and the ConfigurationManager?

c# .net asp.net configurationmanager webconfigurationmanager

John Bubriski · Mar 30, 2009 · Viewed 34k times · Source

What's the difference between the WebConfigurationManager and the ConfigurationManager?

When should I use one over the other?

UPDATED

I just looked at the WebConfigurationManager, and for some reason, you can't access the connection strings as you do in the ConfigurationManager (like an array). Can anyone tell me why MS made it like this? It seems to be a pain to get the connection string you need using the WebConfigurationManager.

UPDATED AGAIN with CAVEAT!

If you don't have a reference to the System.Configuration namespace added to your project, then Visual Studio will show an error when you try and access the WebConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings like an array!

Answer

WebConfigurationManger knows how to deal with configuration inheritance within a web application. As you know, there could be several web.config files in one applicaion - one in the root of the site and any number in subdirectories. You can pass path to the GetSection() method to get possible overridden config.

If we'd looke at WebConfigurationManager with Reflector then things are clear:

public static object GetSection(string sectionName)
{
    ...
    return ConfigurationManager.GetSection(sectionName);
}

public static object GetSection(string sectionName, string path)
{
    ...
    return HttpConfigurationSystem.GetSection(sectionName, path);
}