Quickstart: Create a .NET Framework app with Azure App Configuration

There are two ways to incorporate Azure App Configuration into a .NET Framework-based app.

• The configuration builder for App Configuration enables data from App Configuration to be loaded to App Settings. Your app accesses configuration as it always does via ConfigurationManager. You don't need to make any code change other than updates to app.config or web.config files. This quickstart will walk you through this option.
• As is designed by the .NET Framework, the App Settings can only refresh upon application restart. The App Configuration .NET provider is a .NET Standard library. It supports caching and refreshing configuration dynamically without application restart. If the dynamic configuration is essential to you and you are willing to make code changes, see tutorials on how you can implement dynamic configuration updates in a .NET Framework console app or an ASP.NET web app.

In this quickstart, a .NET Framework console app is used as an example, but the same technique applies to an ASP.NET Web Forms/MVC app.

Prerequisites

• An Azure account with an active subscription. Create one for free.
• An App Configuration store. Create a store.
• Visual Studio
• .NET Framework 4.7.2 or later

Add a key-value

Add the following key-value to the App Configuration store and leave Label and Content Type with their default values. For more information about how to add key-values to a store using the Azure portal or the CLI, go to Create a key-value.

Create a .NET Framework console app

1. Start Visual Studio and select Create a new project.

2. In Create a new project, filter on the Console project type and select Console App (.NET Framework) with C# from the project template list. Press Next.

3. In Configure your new project, enter a project name. Under Framework, select .NET Framework 4.7.2 or higher. Press Create.

Connect to an App Configuration store

1. Right-click your project, and select Manage NuGet Packages. On the Browse tab, search and add the following NuGet packages to your project.

   • Microsoft.Configuration.ConfigurationBuilders.AzureAppConfiguration version 1.0.0 or later
   • Microsoft.Configuration.ConfigurationBuilders.Environment version 2.0.0 or later
   • System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager version 4.6.0 or later

2. Update the App.config file of your project as follows:

   <configSections>
       <section name="configBuilders" type="System.Configuration.ConfigurationBuildersSection, System.Configuration, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" restartOnExternalChanges="false" requirePermission="false" />
   </configSections>
   
   <configBuilders>
       <builders>
           <add name="MyConfigStore" mode="Greedy" connectionString="${ConnectionString}" type="Microsoft.Configuration.ConfigurationBuilders.AzureAppConfigurationBuilder, Microsoft.Configuration.ConfigurationBuilders.AzureAppConfiguration" />
           <add name="Environment" mode="Greedy" type="Microsoft.Configuration.ConfigurationBuilders.EnvironmentConfigBuilder, Microsoft.Configuration.ConfigurationBuilders.Environment" />
       </builders>
   </configBuilders>
   
   <appSettings configBuilders="Environment,MyConfigStore">
       <add key="AppName" value="Console App Demo" />
       <add key="ConnectionString" value ="Set via an environment variable - for example, dev, test, staging, or production connection string." />
   </appSettings>
   

   The connection string of your App Configuration store is read from the environment variable ConnectionString. Add the Environment configuration builder before the MyConfigStore in the configBuilders property of the appSettings section.

3. Open Program.cs, and update the Main method to use App Configuration by calling ConfigurationManager.

   static void Main(string[] args)
   {
       string message = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["TestApp:Settings:Message"];
   
       Console.WriteLine(message);
       Console.ReadKey();
   }
   

Build and run the app

1. Set an environment variable named ConnectionString to the read-only key connection string obtained during your App Configuration store creation.

   If you use the Windows command prompt, run the following command:

   setx ConnectionString "connection-string-of-your-app-configuration-store"
   

   If you use Windows PowerShell, run the following command:

   $Env:ConnectionString = "connection-string-of-your-app-configuration-store"
   

2. Restart Visual Studio to allow the change to take effect.

3. Press Ctrl + F5 to build and run the console app. You should see the message from App Configuration outputs in the console.

Clean up resources

If you don't want to continue using the resources created in this article, delete the resource group you created here to avoid charges.

1. Sign in to the Azure portal, and select Resource groups.
2. In the Filter by name box, enter the name of your resource group.
3. In the result list, select the resource group name to see an overview.
4. Select Delete resource group.
5. You're asked to confirm the deletion of the resource group. Enter the name of your resource group to confirm, and select Delete.

After a few moments, the resource group and all its resources are deleted.

Next steps

In this quickstart, you created a new App Configuration store and used it with a .NET Framework console app. To learn how to enable your .NET Framework app to dynamically refresh configuration settings, continue to the next tutorials.