Here I will brief you about the method which will give you a Configuration value depending upon the key passed. Of course, the key and value pair will be residing in your SharePoint list.

Being a good developer you should make your application as configurable as possible to avoid last minute rush to small changes and hence resulting in another deployment of a solution.

E.g. Consider a case where you have marked your Custom Top Navigation code to have 6 nodes(Hard coded value / taken from constants ); But due to some requirement changes you need to make it 8 nodes now.How you will do it ? Again a Code Change ? If you do; this will require another solution deployment.

Instead of that; identify these kind of parameters in your custom application and try and make those as configurable as possible which may lead to changes in future.

For this to have create a new list Named Configuration Settings at root site collection (of course you can have any name), with 3 site columns :
  1. Rename Title as Config Key : A key used in solution E.g. NumberOfTopNavigationNodes

  2. Config Value : Value for a key E.g. 6

  3. Description : Description of Key and Value or where it is pointing to. E.g. Number of top Navigation nodes used in Top Navigation web part under Controls WSP.
Note: I have used internal Name of Title column in query so rename the column aa.

Lets have a look at the code which will do it for us:
    1. /// <summary>
    2. /// method to retrive Configration value for corresponding key
    3. /// </summary>
    4. /// <param name="ConfigKey">Configration Key Value</param>
    5. /// <returns>string of Configration value</returns>
    6. public static string GetValueForCoreSettingsKey(SPWeb web, string configKey)
    7. {
    8. string resultValue = string.Empty;
    9. try
    10. {
    11. if (web == null)
    12. {
    13. throw new ArgumentNullException("Web");
    14. }
    15. else
    16. {
    17. SPQuery Query = new SPQuery();
    18. string query = "<Where><Eq><FieldRef Name = 'Title'/><Value Type='Text'>"
    19. + configKey
    20. + "</Value></Eq></Where>";
    21. Query.Query = query;
    22. SPList CoreConfigrationList = web.Lists.TryGetList("Configuration Settings");
    23. if (CoreConfigrationList != null)
    24. {
    25. SPListItemCollection ListItemCollection = CoreConfigrationList.GetItems(Query);
    27. if (ListItemCollection != null)
    28. {
    29. foreach (SPListItem ListItem in ListItemCollection)
    30. {
    31. resultValue = ListItem["ConfigurationValue"].ToString();
    32. }
    33. }
    34. }
    35. }
    36. }
    37. catch (Exception)
    38. {
    39. throw;
    40. }
    41. return resultValue;
    42. }
Here you need to pass the parameter of SPWeb Object and Configuration Key of which you need a value.

E.g. GetValueForCoreSettingsKey(web,NumberOfTopNavigationNodes)

By this way you can keep your application configurable and easy to maintain in future. Simply changing the value for an entry will solve your purpose.

Happy SharePoint!!!