How to read your own config file with a VSTools Application
This article is a result of a couple of recent support incidents where developers would like to read a config from from a Visual Studio Tools (VSTools) addin. VSTools is a special situation because for one, it is a dll, not an exe, and second it only runs if GP is running. VSTools can automatically access the dynamics.exe.config file, steps on how to do that are outlined in KB Article 933930 
. The KB is for 9.0 and references the Dynamics.config file, but it also works for the Dynamics.exe.config on 10.0.
In this case, we don't want to use the dynamics.exe.config, we want to use our own config file. Since we are working with a dll, there is no automatic reading from config files like with an exe. Obviously, there is more than one way to handle this and there may be a better way. This is just one way, that I know works, and it's not too difficult.
This article shows a method to use xml to read the data from a config file. The main VSTools project is called DynamicsGPAddin.dll.
- The config file is named DynamicsGPAddin.dll.config and is deployed to the Addins folder in the main Microsoft Dynamics GP directory. The config file contains the following information. You can define this however you want, this just a sample config file.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<startup>
<supportedRuntime version="v1.1.4444"/>
<requiredRuntime version="v1.0.9999"/>
</startup>
</configuration>
- The name of the VSTools application is DynamicsGPAddin.dll and contains a form with a button and two text fields. The button reads the config file and displays the data on the window fields. In order for the code to execute, references to the following must be marked.
System.Configuration
System.XML
- The button code is as follows:
C# Code Example
Dave
MBS Dev Support
