Is having a global Config class a bad thing?

Question

Currently in my personal website I'm building I'm using a global static Config class to hold everything configurable I might need to change that is semi-global. So right now it looks about like this:

public static class Config
{
    public static string ConnectionString = "mongodb://localhost";
    //more configuration options..
    public static MongoDB.Driver.MongoDatabase GetDB(){
        MongoServer server = MongoServer.Create(Config.ConnectionString);
        MongoDatabase db = server.GetDatabase(Config.Database);
        return db;
    }
    public static Markdown GetMarkdown(){
        var options=new MarkdownOptions(){
            AutoHyperlink=true,
            AutoNewlines=false,
            EmptyElementSuffix=" />",
            LinkEmails=false,
            StrictBoldItalic=true
        };
        var m=new Markdown(options);
        return m;

    }
}

Is using a global config class like this an anti-pattern of some sort? Also, I prefer for my connection strings to be outside of web.config. I like my web.config to be as minimal as possible.

Answer 1

Well of the 3 members only 1 is really config, the other two are utility really.

Having configuration in compiled code is really a pain to maintain if those configs need to be changed, since it requires a rebuild, that is really the reason for configuration files.

Answer 2

I do things similar to this but not for settings like connection strings. If the connection string needs to change, you need to update and rebuild your project. If you stored the connection string in your web.config, a simple update allow your app to immediately use the new setting (no recompile).

Answer 3

Earlz ,

Regarding your second question you can do something like this, there is no need to have all the connections or configs in web.config. You can have a separate config file and point that in the web.config file as below

<connectionStrings configSource="config\yourpath\connectionStrings.config"/>

Regarding the first question , write a common method which get the values. Load all the values to a constants file and write a helper class to get those values

Answer 4

The anti-pattern is that you have GetMarkdown and ConnectionString together in the same class because they are both static, yet they really have no functional relationship. GetMarkdown and GetDB both look like factory methods and they should probably be in their own classes.

The Single Responsibility Principle says you should group things together that are likely change for the same reason. It's unlikely that your database connection and markdown config will change at the same time or for the same reason.

Answer 5

We moved our config settings to the database. Makes it easier when moving from Dev to QA to Prod. The blog entry is here.

Related to this, we put the connection string off to the side in a WebEnvironment.config. So now we can promote our code with web.config changes and not worry about the connection string. That blog post is here.