Disabling web.config inheritance for behaviorExtensions

Question

I'm trying to add a web application in IIS under an existing (root level) website. The root level website's web.config file defines certain behaviorExtensions under system.serviceModel:

    <extensions>
        <behaviorExtensions>
            <add name="errorHandler" type="API.ErrorHandler.WCFErrorHandlerElement, API.ErrorHandler, Version=1.5.1.832, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" />
        </behaviorExtensions>
    </extensions>

The extension is used like this:

        <serviceBehaviors>
            <behavior name="DefaultRESTBasedHTTPSServiceBehavior">
                <errorHandler />
            </behavior>
        </serviceBehaviors>

For certain reasons I'm not allowed to add a reference to the required assembly in the added website, so I want to disable the extension's inheritance by this way (in the added website's web.config of course):

<behaviors>      
  <serviceBehaviors>
    <clear/>
  </serviceBehaviors>
  <endpointBehaviors>
    <clear/>
  </endpointBehaviors>
</behaviors>

I was also trying to prevent the inheritance of the extensions section like this: <extensions><clear/></extensions>. It seems though, that <clear/> is not supported for the extensions node.

Yet I get the following exception when a WCF error happens on the added website (the problem is at Line 191):

Parser Error Message: The type 'API.ErrorHandler.WCFErrorHandlerElement, API.ErrorHandler, Version=1.5.1.832, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' registered for extension 'errorHandler' could not be loaded.

Line 189:           <serviceBehaviors>
Line 190:               <behavior name="DefaultRESTBasedHTTPSServiceBehavior">
Line 191:                   <errorHandler />
Line 192:               </behavior>
Line 193:               <behavior name="DefaultSOAPBasedHTTPSServiceBehavior">

Please consider, that it is not possible to prohibit inheritance in the root level website's web.config, because other added websites are using the settings in question.

Answer 1

If you are able to use the <location> element in the root web.config then you can chose which sections not to inherit using the inheritInChildApplications attribute:

For example:

<location path="MyWebApp" inheritInChildApplications="false">
    <system.serviceModel>
    </system.serviceModel>
</location>