.Net 2.0 Configuration Articles

I recently looked into creating my own .net configuration section by implementing a custom configuration handler, which leverages the System.Configuration classes.  Piece of cake I thought... I had written my own configuration handlers in .net 1.1, which was straightforward using the IConfigurationSectionHandler Interface.  When using this interface, all you need to do is create your object from the XmlNode that is passed in.  Pretty simple!

I knew System.Configuration had been enhanced from v1.1 to v2.0 (resulting in its' own assembly), however I didn't realise the implementation had changed so radically.  When all you are doing is reading data from configuration, the only real change you have to make in moving from 1.1 to 2.0 (or higher) is to use the ConfigurationManager Class instead of the ConfigurationSettings Class.  This doesn't give you much insight into what else has changed.  It turns out that if you now want to create your own configuration section you need to derive from the right base configuration classes and override the right methods, which when attempting to achieve with the MSDN documentation of the classes is pretty hard, because it's not too crash hot!  So I stumbled upon these 3 fantastic articles by Jon Rista which put me on track in no time...  If my brief experiences with the configuration classes and their lack of documentation is anything to go by, Jon has obviously spent a lot of time banging his head so we don't have to.  Thanks Jon!