ASP.NET Universal Providers + Azure CSCFG - asp.net

Question

Following Hanselman's post about the new ASP.NET Universal Providers:
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/IntroducingSystemWebProvidersASPNETUniversalProvidersForSessionMembershipRolesAndUserProfileOnSQLCompactAndSQLAzure.aspx
How would you configue it to read the connection string for the CSCFG file as opposed to web.config?

Answer 1

I don't think you can make the Universal Providers read from the ServiceConfiguration (as opposed to the web.config). But what you can do is modify the web.config with information from the ServiceConfiguration each time you deploy your application OR each time you modify the ServiceConfiguration.
In your WebRole.cs you would first write some code that does this. There is a topic on MSDN that kinda explains how you can do this:
Run in elevated mode
Reference %WINDIR%\system32\inetsrv\Microsoft.Web.Administration.dll
Write this in the OnStart method (you will need to change this code):
using (var server = new ServerManager())
{
// get the site's web configuration
var siteNameFromServiceModel = "Web"; // update this site name for your site.
var siteName =
string.Format("{0}_{1}", RoleEnvironment.CurrentRoleInstance.Id, siteNameFromServiceModel);
var siteConfig = server.Sites[siteName].GetWebConfiguration();
// get the appSettings section
var appSettings = siteConfig.GetSection("appSettings").GetCollection()
.ToDictionary(e => (string)e["key"], e => (string)e["value"]);
// reconfigure the machine key
var machineKeySection = siteConfig.GetSection("system.web/machineKey");
machineKeySection.SetAttributeValue("validationKey", appSettings["validationKey"]);
machineKeySection.SetAttributeValue("validation", appSettings["validation"]);
machineKeySection.SetAttributeValue("decryptionKey", appSettings["decryptionKey"]);
machineKeySection.SetAttributeValue("decryption", appSettings["decryption"]);
server.CommitChanges();
}
Now what this topic doesn't cover are changes to the ServiceConfiguration (say you modify the connection string from the portal without redeploying). That's why you'll also need to handle the RoleEnvironment.Changing event, to update the configuration on such a change (you can also prevent the instance to reboot here).