This documentation is archived and is not being maintained.

ConfigurationSectionGroup Class

Updated: July 2009

Represents a group of related sections within a configuration file.

Namespace:  System.Configuration
Assembly:  System.Configuration (in System.Configuration.dll)

'Declaration
Public Class ConfigurationSectionGroup
'Usage
Dim instance As ConfigurationSectionGroup

Settings in configuration files (such as the Web.config file) are organized into sections. Because some sections are related, it is often convenient to group them in a section group. The ConfigurationSectionGroup class represents the sectionGroup XML element that is used to group sections when they are defined in the configSections element of a configuration file. Section groups can be nested (a section group can contain other section groups as well as sections). The following example shows a configSections element that defines three nested section groups:

<configSections>
  <sectionGroup name="system.web.extensions"...>
    <sectionGroup name="scripting" ...>
      <section name="scriptResourceHandler".../>
      <sectionGroup name="webServices"...>
        <section name="jsonSerialization" .../>
        <section name="profileService" ... />        <section name="authenticationService" .../>
        <section name="roleService" .../>
      </sectionGroup>
    </sectionGroup>
  </sectionGroup>
</configSections>

The configuration system loads settings from configuration files into ConfigurationSectionGroup objects. You can use the Sections and SectionGroups properties to access the sections and section groups that are contained in a ConfigurationSectionGroup object.

For more information about how to access information from configuration files, see the ConfigurationManager class.

The following example shows how to use the ConfigurationSectionGroup class to retrieve configuration settings. The example is a console application that reads configuration settings and writes information about each configuration section group and the sections in it to the console.

The Main method loads the configuration settings into a Configuration object, retrieves the SectionGroups collection from the Configuration object, and then calls the ShowSectionGroupCollectionInfo method to display the section property values.

The ShowSectionGroupCollectionInfo method iterates through the section groups and calls the ShowSectionGroupInfo method for each one.

The ShowSectionGroupInfo method displays the name of the section group, some property values, and the names of the sections that it contains. If the section group contains section groups, this method calls ShowSectionGroupCollectionInfo recursively to display those section groups.

The indentLevel field is used to add spaces to the left side of displayed lines to show logical groupings. All lines are limited to 79 characters of text to avoid line wrapping, which would make it harder to distinguish the logical groupings.

Imports System
Imports System.Collections
Imports System.Configuration

Class UsingConfigurationSectionGroup
   Private Shared indentLevel As Integer = 0

    Public Shared Sub Main(ByVal args() As String)

        ' Get the application configuration file. 
        Dim config As System.Configuration.Configuration = _
            ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration( _
            ConfigurationUserLevel.None)

        ' Get the collection of the section groups. 
        Dim sectionGroups As ConfigurationSectionGroupCollection = _
            config.SectionGroups

        ' Display the section groups.
        ShowSectionGroupCollectionInfo(sectionGroups)
    End Sub 'Main

    Shared Sub ShowSectionGroupCollectionInfo( _
        ByVal sectionGroups _
        As ConfigurationSectionGroupCollection)

        Dim group As ConfigurationSectionGroup
        For Each group In sectionGroups
            ShowSectionGroupInfo(group)
        Next group
    End Sub 'ShowSectionGroupCollectionInfo

    Shared Sub ShowSectionGroupInfo( _
    ByVal sectionGroup As ConfigurationSectionGroup)
        ' Get the section group name.
        indent("Section Group Name: " + sectionGroup.Name)

        ' Get the fully qualified section group name.
        indent("Section Group Name: " + sectionGroup.SectionGroupName)

        indentLevel += 1

        indent("Type: " + sectionGroup.Type)
        indent("Is Group Required?: " + _
           sectionGroup.IsDeclarationRequired.ToString())
        indent("Is Group Declared?: " + _
            sectionGroup.IsDeclared.ToString())
        indent("Contained Sections:")

        indentLevel += 1
        Dim section As ConfigurationSection
        For Each section In sectionGroup.Sections
            indent("Section Name:" + section.SectionInformation.Name)
        Next section
        indentLevel -= 1

        If (sectionGroup.SectionGroups.Count > 0) Then
            indent("Contained Section Groups:")

            indentLevel += 1
            Dim sectionGroups As ConfigurationSectionGroupCollection = _
                sectionGroup.SectionGroups
            ShowSectionGroupCollectionInfo(sectionGroups)
            indentLevel -= 1
        End If

        indent("")
        indentLevel -= 1

    End Sub 'ShowSectionGroupInfo
    Shared Sub indent(ByVal text As String)
        Dim i As Integer 
        For i = 0 To indentLevel - 1
            Console.Write("  ")
        Next i
        Console.WriteLine(Left(text, 79 - indentLevel * 2))
    End Sub 'getSpacer

End Class 'UsingConfigurationSectionGroup 

Any public static (Shared in Visual Basic) members of this type are thread safe. Any instance members are not guaranteed to be thread safe.

Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Starter Edition, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2000 SP4, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 98

The .NET Framework and .NET Compact Framework do not support all versions of every platform. For a list of the supported versions, see .NET Framework System Requirements.

.NET Framework

Supported in: 3.5, 3.0, 2.0

Date

History

Reason

July 2009

Rewrote the remarks and example to make them clearer.

Customer feedback.

Show: