Get the machine configuration file information using ConfigurationManager class

This article tells you how to retrive information of configuration file which is applied to the entire application.

Introduction

If it is needed to retrieve data about the machine configuration settings that are applied to the entire computer resided applications, do as follow:

1. Add new project
2. Add a button to the Form1
3. Add the following code in the editor

Code

private void GetMachineConfigurationSections()
{
    try
    {
        /* Create a new cofiguration instance and specify it to target the,the machine configuration settings as follow */
        Configuration oConfiguration = ConfigurationManager.OpenMachineConfiguration();
        // This variable help us to know the section number
        int SectionsNumber = 0;
        MessageBox.Show("The machine configuration sections");
        /* Get all sections in the machine configuration file. It can be found,in the directory : C:\Microsoft.NET\Framework\version\config */
        foreach (ConfigurationSection section in oConfiguration.Sections)
        {
            MessageBox.Show(string.Format("The section name is : {0}",section.SectionInformation.Name));
            //Increment the sections' number to get the count 
            SectionsNumber++;
        }
       
        //Display the sections count 
        MessageBox.Show("The number of sections");
        MessageBox.Show(SectionsNumber.ToString());

        //Display the machine configuration file path
        MessageBox.Show("The machine configuration section path");
        MessageBox.Show(oConfiguration.FilePath);
    }
    catch(ConfigurationErrorsException caught){ MessageBox.Show(caught.Message);
}

private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    GetMachineConfigurationSections();
}

It is possible to get other information instead of the section name by using other attributes of  section.SectionInformation  object