How do we manage per-site parameters, in asp.net 5.0?

Jeff Dege 1

We're trying to move a fairly complicated set of web applications from .NET 4.5 to .NET 5.0, hosted in IIS.

One problem we need to figure out is how to manage the per-environment configuration, during deploys.

With .NET 4.5 we are using web deploy packages. The production team already has hundreds of xxx.SetParameters.xml files for the many customers and environments.

In dev and test, we're using appsettings.%ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT%.json, but that's not going to work for our production deploys.

The production team would like to continue using web deploy packages with xxx.Parameters.xml and xxx.SetParameters.xml files, so they don't have to reconstruct them in some new mechanism.

We're fine with telling them they have to change, if they really do have to change.

How are per-environment configuration settings usually managed, in asp.net 5.0?

Is there a way of telling asp.net to look to the web.config files, instead of appsettings.json?

Lex Li (Microsoft) 4,662 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2021-05-05T06:49:05.703+00:00

ASP.NET Core is not ASP.NET 4.x, so there isn't that kind of compatibility. You can hack the source code (as everything is open source, but the best way is to adapt to the new paradigm.
Sam Wu-MSFT 7,036 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2021-05-05T06:58:16.83+00:00

@Jeff Dege Is your .NET 4.5 hosted on iis? If it is, then you can try to migrate the web.config file directly. If not, I suggest you try to migrate .NET 4.5 to .NET 5.0 first to see if it works properly, and then publish to iis.
Jeff Dege 1 Reputation point

2021-05-05T13:34:49.317+00:00

But there's the question - what is the new paradigm?

What is the canonical way of injecting environment-specific settings into a website deploy, an asp.net 5.0?

Not just connection strings, but feature flags, etc.?
Sam Wu-MSFT 7,036 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2021-05-07T09:18:21.383+00:00

@Jeff Dege There is no asp.net 5.0, only .net 5.0. please post more details information about your requirement.
Jeff Dege 1 Reputation point

2021-05-07T14:11:16.197+00:00

What then, is this?

Develop ASP.NET Core apps

In any case, our requirements are pretty simple. We need to be able to deploy websites to production environments where the production environment configuration is maintained separately from the source code.

I have some ideas that might work for this, I'm looking for insight as to what is the usual practice.
Sam Wu-MSFT 7,036 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2021-05-11T08:59:30.597+00:00

@Jeff Dege This is asp.net core 5.0, not asp.net. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ASP.NET AND ASP.NET CORE - ASP.NET VS ASP.NET CORE