ASP.NET Core Configuration Tips

Configuration tips for success

David Pine

3 minute read

Being a software developer, it’s in our nature to configure various aspects of the applications that we write. With ASP.NET Core configuring our applications is really straight forward. Luckily, there is a lot of really well written documentation surrounding this topic.

However, there is still room for improvement. I’ve prepared a few tips that can enhance developer productivity by taking advantage of various C# features.

C# Class < – > JSON

ASP.NET Core configuration via the IOptions<T> and IOptionsSnapshot<T> have been around for a long time. Their usage is a first class citizen within ASP.NET Core applications, and work to tie appsettings.json values to corresponding configuration POCO’s . As a refresher on configuration, there is a one-to-one relationship between a JSON object in the appsettings.json and the C# class that represents it.

appsettings.json

{
    "notificationSettings": {
        "notificationInterval": "00:15:00",
        "isMulticast": true,
        "sources": [
            {
                "url": "https://www.contoso.com/notificationHub",
                "key": "f7ea5e2b22bf907344f3a780caa0a166"
            }
        ]
    }
}

NotificationSettings.cs and NotificationSource.cs

public class NotificationSettings
{
    public TimeSpan NotificationInterval { get;set; }
    public TimeSpan TimeoutInterval { get; set; }
    public bool IsImplicit { get; set; }
    public List<NotificationSource> Sources { get; set; }

    public NotificationSetting()
    {
        IsImplicit = true;
        TimeoutInterval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30);
    }
}

public class NotificationSource
{
    public Uri Url { get; set; }
    public string Key { get; set; }
}

If you looked at both the appsettings.json and the two C# classes, I’m hoping that you noticed something. I hope that you noticed that the JSON settings didn’t fully provide a value for all the mapped properties in the NotificationSettings object. We have however, set these values as part of the object’s .ctor.

ProTip Use C# 6 Property Initializers to set default values. If the corresponding property exists in the JSON object mapping, it will be overwritten as to be expected; however, if omitted your default value is used.

Using property initializers, this is simplified as follows:

public class NotificationSettings
{
    public TimeSpan NotificationInterval { get;set; }
    public TimeSpan TimeoutInterval { get; set; } = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30);
    public bool IsImplicit { get; set; } = true;
    public List<NotificationSource> Sources { get; set; }
}

It is a good practice to specify default values for your settings classes. As part of the Startup.cs class, the ConfigureServices method is where you will “Configure” your mappings of the JSON section that is associated to the C# object representing it. For example:

public void ConfigureServices(
    IServiceCollection services)
{
    // Configure the "NotificationSettings"
    // mapping it to the corresponding JSON section

    services.Configure<NotificationSettings>(
        Configuration.GetSection("NotificationSettings"));
}

This should look very familiar.

ProTip Use C# 6 nameof operator to configure your C# class mapping. This alleviates the usage of magic strings and enforces a consistent naming convention.

The change is tiny, however; this is another great usage of the nameof operator. This assumes that the the section in the JSON file matches the name of the class object representing it. Additionally, it serves as a reason to keep the names matching.

public void ConfigureServices(
    IServiceCollection services)
{
    services.Configure<NotificationSettings>(
        Configuration.GetSection(nameof(NotificationSettings)));
}

Conclusion

I have provided a few simple tips for ASP.NET Core configuration leveraging a few C# 6 features. They are nothing earth-shattering, but they are practical and very useful. I often see developers not taking advantage of simple features like these when they are available. These two features alone in an ASP.NET Core configuration could simplify refactoring and stream-line readability – that’s enough reason for me, I hope it is for you too!

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