Hi, is it possible to change the connection string in my web.config automatically when build type is release using Nant? if so, how? thanks
I assume that you want to do this in order to have the connection string point out a production environment rather than development or test environment when Nant builds the release code. I usually have a different approach to solve this scenario; keep the connection strings in a separate file. You can do this by using the configSource
attribute:
<!-- point out a file containing the connectionStrings config section -->
<connectionStrings configSource="connections.config"></connectionStrings>
The connections.config
file should look something like this:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<connectionStrings>
<add name="myDb" connectionString="{your connection string}"/>
</connectionStrings>
Since the connection strings rarely change in the production environment, the file connections.config
can then typically be excluded from the deployment.
I think you could use the xmlpoke task. For example, if your web.config is
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
<connectionStrings>
<add name="myDb" connectionString="blah" providerName="blah"/>
</connectionStrings>
</configuration>
Then you could add a task to your build file like this.
<xmlpoke
file="path_to_your_web_root\Web.config"
xpath="/configuration/connectionStrings/add[@name='myDb']/@connectionString"
value="your_connection_string" />
Oh, here is the documentation of the xmlpoke task. http://nant.sourceforge.net/release/latest/help/tasks/xmlpoke.html
I use a simple way. I prepared many versions of the config file, each contains its own connection strings (DEV, TEST, PRODUCTION). In NANT script, when I author different targets, I copy the specific config file to overwrite the default one.
Another alternative is to use a template where you have a token in place of the connection string e.g.
<connectionString>
<add name="myDb" connectionString="@CONNECTION_STRING@" />
</connectionStrings>
Then use filterchains to replace this with the appropriate string.
<copy file="Web.config.template" tofile="Web.config" overwrite="true">
<filterchains>
<replacetokens>
<token key="CONNECTION_STRING" value="${ConnectionString}" />
</replacetokens>
</filterchains>
The value of the ConnectionString property will vary according to the build type.
Filterchains are described in the Nant Documentation