#NConfigurationManager Consolidate your different web, app.config's throughout your solution and over different machines. It also aids in allowing web.config to be checked in under source control and doing true XCOPY deployments.

The goal is to create a transparent diffable overview of your settings across staging stages. No merging, no inheritence.

NConfigurationManager also throws helpful exceptions when the configured environment loads with more or less settings then the default this will prevent annoying run time bugs when you forget to set that new connectionstring/appsetting in a new environment.

##Setup Nothing fancy just yet, this is an bet release so no nuget or anything.

1. Reference NConfigurationManager.dll and System.Configuration.dll

2. Create a folder called NConfig.Environments in a shared parent

3. Create a file called environments.config in previous folder with the following contents

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <configuration>
     <appSettings>
       <add key="default" value="development" />
       <add key="COMPUTERNAME" value="development" />
   	  <add key="COMPUTERNAME" value="test" />
   	  <add key="FQDN" value="acceptance" />
   	  <add key="IP" value="production" />
     </appSettings>
   </configuration>

4. Create the environment config files (in this case test.config, development.config, acceptance.config, production.config) i.e test.config:

   <configuration>
     <appSettings>
       <clear/>
       <add key="environment" value="test" />
       <add key="key1" value="value1" />
     </appSettings>
     <connectionStrings>
       <clear/>
     </connectionStrings>
   </configuration>

5. In the web/app config mark the appSettings/connectionStrings as external:
	```
	<connectionStrings configSource="Configuration\connectionStrings.config"></connectionStrings>
	<appSettings configSource="Configuration\appSettings.config"></appSettings>
	```

6. Create example config files:
	* `Configuration\connectionStrings.example.config`    
	* `Configuration\appSettings.example.config`    

7. Create a post build event

	```
	IF NOT EXIST "$(projectDir)\Configuration\appSettings.config" IF EXIST "$(projectDir)\Configuration\appSettings.example.config" COPY "$(projectDir)\Configuration\appSettings.example.config" "$(projectDir)\Configuration\appSettings.config"
	IF NOT EXIST "$(projectDir)\Configuration\connectionStrings.config" IF EXIST "$(projectDir)\Configuration\connectionStrings.example.config" COPY "$(projectDir)\Configuration\connectionStrings.example.config" "$(projectDir)\Configuration\connectionStrings.config"
	```

8. ignore the external config under `Configuration` in source control e.g in .gitignore add these lines
	```
	appSettings.config
	connectionStrings.config
	```

9. Now in your application's main /web app start call `NConfigurationManager.Initialize()` this will resolve which environment to pick up based on this order:
  FQDN, ComputerName, Domain (network domain), IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, "default"

10. Use `ConfigurationManager.AppSettings` and `ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings` like nothing happened.