Friday, April 24, 2015

ConfigurationTransformations Nuget

As in my recent work I had to deal with some configuration transformations from C# code I've created a nuget that can be used if you want to apply a transformation programmatically. To do that you can install the ConfigurationTransformation package from the official nuget repository.
In order to use it you can call the following from the package manager console:
PM> Install-Package ConfigurationTransformations

and then just create an instance of the ConfigTransformer class to apply the transformation.
ConfigTransformer configTransformer = new ConfigTransformer();
string sourceFile = @"C:\temp\web.config";
string transformationFile = @"C:\temp\web.Release.config";
string destinationFile = @"C:\temp\resultweb.config";
TransformationResult transformationResult = configTransformer.ApplyTransformation(sourceFile, transformationFile, destinationFile);
If you don't specify the destination file the source file content will be changed with the result transformated content.

The other option is to get the result content without saving it to a file:
ConfigTransformer configTransformer = new ConfigTransformer();
string sourceFile = @"C:\temp\web.config";
string transformationFile = @"C:\temp\web.Release.config";
string transformedContent = configTransformer.GetTransformedFileContent(sourceFile, transformationFile);

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Small helper tool for configuration transformations

In my daily work I often use configuration transformations for different settings for the different environment and often I need to add a new transformation for a new environment. So I've decided to create a small tool that can automate adding new transformations to all the projects in a solution. In addition to this I've added functionality for applying config transformations as this can be useful if you want to test the transformations from command line. Here's a short description of the tool:

TransformHelper

Small tool helping with the usage of the configuration transformations

It has two

  • Add - passing solution, existing transformation and the new transformation the tool will go through all the projects in the solution and check for configuration files having the existing transformation and will add new transformation copying the files from the existing
  • Remove - passing solution, and existing transformation the tool will go through all the projects in the solution and check for configuration files having the existing transformation and will delete them
  • Apply - passing source file, transformation file and optional target file (if not passed the source file content will be replaced)
  • ApplySLN - passing solution, and existing transformation the tool will go through all the projects in the solution and apply the transformation on the original file
Usage
  • Add mode (you may not specify the mode here as the Add mode is the default behavior)
TransformHelper.exe [-mode add] -solution C:\Work\MySolution.sln -existing Dev -new Live

This will check all the projects in the solution for files like [fileName].Dev.config and will add the corresponding [fileName].Live.config files copying the content from the existing ones
  • Remove mode
TransformHelper.exe -mode remove -solution C:\Work\MySolution.sln -existing Dev

This will check all the projects in the solution for files like [fileName].Dev.config and will delete them and remove them from the project
  • Apply mode
TransformHelper.exe -mode apply -source "C:\Work\MySolution\WebProject\web.config" -transformFile "C:\Work\MySolution\WebProject\web.Dev.config" -target "C:\Temp\result.web.config"

This will apply the transformation file C:\Work\MySolution\WebProject\web.Dev.config on C:\Work\MySolution\WebProject\web.config and the result content will be saved in C:\Temp\result.web.config file
  • ApplySLN mode
TransformHelper.exe -mode applySLN -solution C:\Work\MySolution.sln -existing Dev

This will check all the projects in the solution for files like [fileName].Dev.config and if there are files like [fileName].config as well in the project they will be transformed using the Dev transformations

You can find the tool on github here