Parameterizing deployment of ASP applications with VS and MSDeploy

I've worked with a few ASP applications recently where I've wanted to be able to custom-configure the Web Config upon deployment depending on whether it's going to a developer's machine, test server, or production environment. In particular, I'm working on an application now that needs to pull data via SOAP or WCF from a neighboring SharePoint server. The URL of this server will, of course, be different depending on the environment.

There are a variety of situations I wanted to handle.

1. Local deployment and testing on a development rig
2. Fully scripted deployment using Web Deploy through a continuous integration server onto our development server
3. On-demand deployment using the IIS "Deploy > Import Application" wizard

I more-or-less ignored case #1 because this is what developers do every day and they just hack whatever the way to make it work. (Sigh.) I did, however, want to make sure that the parameterization I did continued to work in their environment(s).

For case #2, I've been using msdeploy.exe via the App.deploy.cmd script that appears when you do "Build Deployment Package" from Visual Studio. This can be invoked from a script by simply doing MSBuild /t:Package during build. I'll leave the dynamics of that out of scope for this post. I'm more interested in how you set up the "SetParameters.xml" file properly so that you can feed MSDeploy some scripted parameters during installation to get the Web.Config the way you want it.

For case #3, I've been using the Deploy > Import Applications wizard to pull in the ZIP file produced by the "Package" step of #2. This works well and has a "Enter Application Package Information" page/panel for setting application parameters such as "Application Path" and "Connection String." I wanted to find a way to add parameters to this panel requesting other values.

As it turns out, there are a two primary techniques for building these kinds of configurations. The first is to use "Configurations" in Visual Studio to create additional Web.Config transforms that will substitute values that can be compiled into the applications for different environments. This works well if you know (ahead of time) what the parameters will be in all your configuration environments.

Build Configuration for Web.config

To make this work, you can first create a visual studio "Configuration" in Build > Configuration Manager. Then, create a "New..." configuration.




 I created one called "Staging"


Then, in your Solution Explorer, you use "Add Config Transformations" on the Web.config file.



 This will look at your configurations and create a Web.config transformation file for any new Configurations you have.



 Open your new Web.staging.config file and add an entry:

 
<configuration xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform">
  <appSettings>
     <add key="MySetting" value="My Value"
         xdt:Transform="Replace" xdt:Locator="Match(key)"/>
  </appSettings>
</configuration>

Now, when you select the "Staging" configuration and do a "Build Deployment Package" from Visual Studio, it will automatically replace the setting in your master Web.config with this value. You may have to use Build > Configuration Manager to select the build configuration you want to use (e.g., Staging). You can deploy this package an it will automatically be set properly. This is especially useful for Database connection strings that tend to be fairly well known in most development and testing environments, as long as you're not worried about checking those values into your version control system. I used the following for a DB connection string for the ASP application we were building:

 
  <connectionStrings>
    <add name="ApplicationServices"
      connectionString="data source=TestDBServer;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|\aspnetdb.mdf;User Instance=true"
      xdt:Transform="SetAttributes" xdt:Locator="Match(name)"/>
  </connectionStrings>

Parameters.xml

The second way to parameterize your web config is to establish a "parameters.xml" file for your application that creates these transforms in an externalized way that can be set at deployment time. This is the technique that actually works for cases #2 and #3 above. By setting up parameters.xml, I get a entry to appear in the SetParameters.xml file as well as in the deployment wizard within IIS manager. I'll focus on that for the rest of this post.

First, create a new XML file called "parameters.xml" and store it in the root of your project. Put the following entries to modify your parameters:

 
 <parameters>
  <parameter name="External SP Server Url"
             description="URL of external SharePoint server. Example: http://externalsp.portal.local "
             defaultValue="http://localhost"
             tags="">
    <parameterEntry
        kind="XmlFile"
        scope="obj\\Debug\\Package\\PackageTmp\\Web\.config$"
        match="//appSettings/add[@key='Portal.ExternalSPServerUrl']/@value" />
  </parameter>
</parameters>

This will generate the proper "External SP Server Url" entry in your SetParameters.xml file for scripting as well as place it on the wizard when you deploy with IIS. This replaces a key="Portal.ExternalSPServerUrl" in configuration/appSettings section of the web.config. It took me a while to get the "match" criteria set properly to find it and set the value.

Both these solutions work together -- parameters.xml and Web.config configuration files. One thing to note is that the "defaultValue" in the parameters.xml file will trump whatever settings you have in the web.config templates, so you need to provide a proper value during installation.

References

I found the following links valuable in figuring this out:

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff398068.aspx - how to use parameters to configure deployment
• http://vishaljoshi.blogspot.com/2009/03/web-deployment-webconfig-transformation_23.html - web config transformation using configurations
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/gg454290 - transforming web config for deployment