Dynamically loading the url of a web reference object in C#

Question

Hi,
We have a number of assemblies (C# - VS 2010) that access third party web services via SOAP.  The url to access the site is part of the web reference object.
We have need to be able to change the url used to access the service at run runtime when conditions require.
What would the be the best practice of dynamically setting the url to be used at run time?
Thanks in advance.
SanDegan99

Answer 1

You could specify the URLs as keys in the application configuration file (App.config or web.config) of the main application:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.configuration.configurationmanager.appsettings(v=vs.110).aspx
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa374182(v=vs.85).aspx
App.config:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<startup>
<supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5" />
</startup>
<appSettings>
<add key="url1" value="http://www.url.com/test.asmx"/>
</appSettings>
</configuration>
You can then retrieve these values using the ConfigurationManager class in any assembly that is referenced from the main application like this (add a reference to System.Configuration.dll):
string url = System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["url1"].ToString();
You can change the values of the keys in the application configuration file without having to recompile the application.
The other option is to specify the URLs in a database or some other persistent storage from which you read at runtime but configuration files are generally used to store these kind of variable application settings.
Please remember to mark helpful posts as answer to close your threads and remember that any new question you may have should be asked in a new thread of its own.