Update AppSettings with XmlUpdate in build scripts

· January 20, 2009

I know I will chase this one for ever if I don’t put it up here…

We ran into a situation where we needed to tweak the AppSettings-section of an configuration before tests in the build script.

Luckily there is help to be found. With the XmlUpdate-task (in the MSBuild Community Tasks) this can be accomplished. IF you know how to write the XPath-query.

Here is how (found it here):

<XmlUpdate Namespace=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/.NetConfiguration/v2.0” XmlFileName=”$(SourceDir)\Core\ABSuite\ABClient\App.config”

Xpath=”//configuration/appSettings/add[@key=’Main.ConnectionString’]/@value” Value=”$(DatabaseConnectionString)” />

Also here is a great site to pick up some XPath-skills.

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