Referenced project app.config transform with SlowCheetah

Question

I have a ASP.NET MVC 4 web project

WebUI

that references a ASP.NET 4 Code Library

DAL

The Code Library has a reference to the SlowCheetah 2.5.5 NuGet package and is setup with several transformations for it's App.Config.

The WebUI is using the normal Web.Config transformations but I have also added a reference to SlowCheetah as a test for my problem but it didn't change my issue.

When I publish using

MS Web Deploy

in Visual Studio 2012 or when I publish straight to

File System

using a QA configuration the correct Web.QA.config is put in the root of my website, however the referenced class library configuration is not working, I get a sql connection error on the home page which alerts me that the correct App.Config transformation is most likely not being used for the referenced DAL project.

I thought this would be a .dll.config file in the bin folder for the WebUI, but I am not too sure as I have this working on another web server where I manually changed the default App.Config and Web.Config files and there is no .dll.config file present in the root bin directory of the website.

Anyone know how to get this working?

UPDATE:

Examples below:

DAL Code Library project App.Config

<configuration>
    <configSections>
 </configSections>
    <connectionStrings>
  <add name="DAL.Properties.Settings.DefaultConnection" connectionString="Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=MyDB;Integrated Security=True;" />
 </connectionStrings>
</configuration>

Part of Web.Config from my WebUI project

  <connectionStrings>
    <add name="WebUI.Properties.Settings.DefaultConnection" connectionString="Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=MyDB;Integrated Security=True;" />
  </connectionStrings>

I use a Settings.settings file for each project.

How can I merge the App.Config connection into my Web.Config so that it is transformed during publishing? preferably I would want it to just use the one connection when publishing to the web.

At the moment the DAL referenced project works on the web application if I set the app.config correctly (which only makes some sense to me since its a referenced .dll).

Does adding this DAL.Properties.Settings.DefaultConnection connection to my web.config replace the one the DAL is using?

Answer 1

All of your settings for the web application will come from the web.config file - the app.config won't be used or deployed with the web app. Most likely, that config is there because you are using Entity Framework and that's where the EDMX functionality stores it's connection string. If you put the connection string in the web.config (and use the appropriate config transformations), you should be good.