How to add a "key" and its "name" to apsettings.js in ASP .NET Core Web application

Question

In ASP .NET Core Web Applications I have noticed that the connection string can be put into apsettings.json or secret.json file as follows:

appsettings.json

{
   "ConnectionStrings": {
    "DBConnectionString": "DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=name;AccountKey=the_key;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net"
  }
}

secret.json

{
  "ConnectionStrings:DBConnectionString": "DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=name;AccountKey=the_key;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net"
}

And, it is used in the startup.cs.

public class startup
{
  public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
        {
            services.AddDbContext<AppDBContext>(options =>
                options.UseSqlServer(
                    Configuration.GetConnectionString("DBConnectionString")));
        }
}

Problem:

In the same way the following is a how the connection string is passed in one of the controllers in the ASP .NET Core web Application:

BlogUploadController.cs

 AccountName = "MyAccount";
 AccountKey = "DGKC5745dfdG_+dkfkld";

 string UserConnectionString = string.Format("DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=name;AccountKey=DGAKSECCDI654D_FGd;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net", AccountName, AccountKey);

You can see that I have put the "connection string", and the "AccountKey" directly in the code (which is vulnarable for security threats). Can anybody how to put in the apsettings.json or Secret.json like I have put the database connection string in the above exmple.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Adding things to the appsettings.json is a simple as editing the JSON. Take the custom appsettings.json below:

{
    "Setup": "Setup Value",    
    "Config": {
        "Key": "My Key",
        "Token": "My Token"
    }
}

In order to get the custom values from the above, you can use the Configuration variable in the setup.cs file in APS.NET Core.

string setup = Configuration["Setup"];

To get a value such as Config.Key, you separate the names with a colon :, such as this:

string key = Configuration["Setup:Key"];
string token = Configuration["Setup:Token"];

Do be aware that using appsettings.json to hold secrets is a bad idea, as appsettings.json is usually a public document and not a secrets file.