How to use the ConfigurationManager.AppSettings

Question

Your web.config file should have this structure:

<configuration>
    <connectionStrings>
        <add name="MyConnectionString" connectionString="..." />
    </connectionStrings>
</configuration>

Then, to create a SQL connection using the connection string named MyConnectionString:

SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["MyConnectionString"].ConnectionString);

If you’d prefer to keep your connection strings in the AppSettings section of your configuration file, it would look like this:

<configuration>
    <appSettings>
        <add key="MyConnectionString" value="..." />
    </appSettings>
</configuration>

And then your SqlConnection constructor would look like this:

SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["MyConnectionString"]);