Duplicate keys in appSettings in App.Config

Question

If I have the following xml in my App.Config

  <appSettings>
    <add key="Key" value="Value1" />
    <add key="Key" value="Value2" />
  </appSettings>

then calling ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.GetValues("Key") returns an array of strings with only one entry -- the last entry in in the appSettings ("Value2").

There was a useful article written on how to get this to work on CodeProject (http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/namevaluemultiple.asp), but that doesn't seem to work with .net 2.0 (I get a run-time exception that the appsettings section can't be modified).

Does anyone know of a sample somewhere on how to get this to work in .net 2.0?

Answer 1

I get around this these days by doing:

  <appSettings>
    <add key="Key" value="Value1|Value2" />
  </appSettings>

Or whatever else makes sense as a delimiter instead of | . Then I just use String.Split() to break down the value string into an array of strings.

---

/\/\}{

Answer 2

Ran into same thing, this is clearly A BUG not a feature. 

The function GetValues says it returns a string array and compiles as such. 

We're not getting an array, just a scalar, so it's a bug. 

Faking an array by manually putting delimiters in a single string and doing a split, is still just getting a single string from the function. 

It's a bug.

Microsoft, please fix.

Answer 3

And its a bug that's been around for donkeys years.

 

Microsoft please fix