Dynamic LINQ context

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to create a dynamic context, and what I mean by that is I have two databases: one for testing, and one for production. Depending on where my website is hosted, I want my context to be pointing at one of the two. So, in my web.config I have:

<add name="Testing_ChannelsEntities" connectionString="removed for brevity" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" />
<add name="Production_ChannelsEntities" connectionString="removed for brevity" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient" />

Please don't get hung-up on the fact that I removed the connectionString for this example. Just note that I have a testing and a production connection in the web.config.

So, here is my codebehind that I would expect to create a context to the testing connectionString:

using (ChannelsEntities chEntity = new ChannelsEntities("Testing_ChannelsEntities")) {
    // removed the business logic because it's not relevant at all
}

Once execution hits the using statement, I get the following error:

Format of the initialization string does not conform to specification starting at index 0.

What am I missing here? This should be easy to do.

Answer 1

Try:

using (ChannelsEntities chEntity = new ChannelsEntities(WebConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["Testing_ChannelsEntities"].ConnectionString)) {
    // removed the business logic because it's not relevant at all
}

Answer 2

I've done similar. Try this -

using (ChannelsEntities chEntity = new ChannelsEntities("name=Testing_ChannelsEntities")) {}

Answer 3

We put our connection string in a root web.config. You can reference the connection string by name in your virtual diectory and it will inherit the settings from your root web.config.