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C# - Create Variable Accessible Through Whole Project

I have a connection string placed throughout my whole project, and would like to be able to bury it away from anyone who may be able to find it when I put my project into production. How can I create a string outside of my .cs files that contains this connection string that can be used inside of my .cs files?
I have tried to Google search this and have had no luck finding any answers.

In Dotnet Core, consider using configuration files. When your app start, it reads configuration settings (connection strings included). This will separate your configuration values from your code. Take a look at this:
Configuration in ASP.NET Core

You can create a textfile out of your project and write your value in there.
Then you access it again with a FileReader.
Another way is to write it in your configuration files
or decrypt it as good as you can.
A full security to hide your ConnectionString from others is unfortunately not possible.

Maybe you can create TEXT file with encrypted string inside folder of project, than whenever you need it decrypt an use it

How to get an Application Settings shared to all users that could be changed at run time

I need some setting of an application that will be shared among all users of the computer, but could also be changed at at run time. That seam simple, but according to the Application Settings MSDN article, it's either one or the other.
There are two types of application settings, based on scope:
Application-scoped settings can be used for information such as a URL for a Web service or a database connection string. These values are associated with the application. Therefore, users cannot change them at run time.
User-scoped settings can be used for information such as persisting the last position of a form or a font preference. Users can change these values at run time.
I could write code to edit the app.config XML file, but since it's located in the program directory, it's protected under windows 7. So this is not possible without elevating the program or playing with NTFS rights.
So I need the configuration file to be written in a common folder like System.Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.CommonApplicationData).
But this is a fairly common requirement!
So, I'm wondering if there a simple way of achieving this without reinventing the wheel, or if I have to write my own Setting Manager.

After reading the answers here and playing with the ConfigurationManager.Open methods I ended up with the following:
string path = Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.CommonApplicationData), "MyApp", "MyApp.config");
Configuration MyAppConfig = ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration(new ExeConfigurationFileMap { ExeConfigFilename = path }, ConfigurationUserLevel.None);
The nice part is the file doesn't have to exist, and if you call Save() on it, it will create the folder and the file for you. AppSettings["key"] didn't work though so I had to use
MyAppConfig.AppSettings.Settings["key"].Value
to read and write an existing value and
MyAppConfig.AppSettings.Settings.Add("key", value)
to add a new value.

I have had a similar problem and ended up writing my own settings class. It was very basic. I created a Settings class with the properties I needed, and a SettingsManager with Save() and Load() methods that simply serialized/deserialized the object via XmlSerializer into/from a file.
Yes, it is your own code, but it is very simple code, takes less time than trying to figure out whether there is a component providing what you need and how to customize it.

The Application Settings infrastructure does not support this - only non-editable application data and user-scoped data are supported. You can easily read and write your own XML into the CommonApplicationData folders, however, instead of using the application data.

c# help needed for application update

Hello guys I think the question i asked in the previous post is unclear OK fine. i am explaining in brief.
for example.
I have a form where i have placed one textbox and command button.
I have fired a event when i click the button the text under the textbox change to "hello" ok fine.
what is my problem is..
the application is created and I published ok.
After some week I thought I want to update my application. where in the place of "hello" I want "hi". I know that we can compile the whole project and publish it.
but I don't want my whole application to be updated.
for example.
What antivirus company do they have a definition file where they only update the definition file not the whole application. after the update it applies to whole application.
I want my application also to do same process like antivirus company do.

You should read that "Hello" from a content file (XML). Then you can just push out the new file.

Use a configuration file. You can add an application.config (or if you're developing a web app, web.config) file to your primary project. Within this configuration file, you can define AppSettings (which are built-in, usually simple and atomic string or number fields that the application will need), ConnectionStrings (which specifically provide information applications will need to connect to a database), or custom configuration sections (used for more complex, related sets of data that are loaded into custom classes you define, such as a basic company profile). Within your code, you access AppSettings by using the static ConfigurationManager.Appsettings[] collection; you tell it the name of the setting you defined in the file, and it returns the value (or null, if it can't find the setting you defined).
Related, but different, is the use of Resource files. Resource files usually contain a dictionary of location-specific data used by the UI, such as text strings, icons and images. Actual resources can be compiled into one big file, or resource files can be a list of paths and filenames to the actual resources. You can use resource files to create different "skins" for your application to be used by different companies by referencing images to use for UI elements, or to translate labels and other text on your application's UI. Resource files are accessed through a ResourceManager; you tell it where the resource file is, and it will load the information into a similar "dictionary"; you then tell it the name of the resource and you get the resource back.

For your specific question, I'll answer the same thing as Henk. But, I think that your real question is "How I do create patch in .NET".
You can check this link:
How can I patch .NET assemblies?

You could design your application to use plugins. This way you only have to update a plugin and not the whole application.

if you want to create a patch for asp.net application , first of all , you have to deploy your project with Web Deployment Project.
then choose Create a separate assembly for each page and control output in output assemblies tab and re-build your solution .
the result of deployment is bunch of DLL which mapped to each page or control.
Now if you changed one page's data (in code behind) , you need to deploy your project again but in this case you can just upload the changed dll file.

How do you embed app.config in C# projects?

When you compile a C# project, the app settings from app.config are saved along with the exe file. For example, if the program name is "solve_np.exe", there will be a "solve_np.exe.config" next to it, making it look less neat than I want it to. How can you embed it into the .exe?
I tried to set Build Action to Embed Resource, but that did not do the trick.

Aha. I guess you're falling foul of Visual Studio automatically placing stuff in configuration that you DONT want configured by the end user.
In this case use resources. Simply add a new file of type .resx. With this you'll be able to add things like strings and images to the resource file. After you build this it should provide static access to the resources (it typically generates a code file from the resources for you so you don't have to access ResourceManager yourself).
E.G. If I made resources.resx with a string called MyConfigValue after a build I should be able to access this like:
textBox.Text = Resources.MyConfigValue;
If you want values that are kinda variable but shouldn't be configurable then this is the right place to put them.
HTH.

It isn't unprofessional to have an app.config file shipped alongside your exe. I think the word you may be looking for is untidy. I personally don't find this is the case myself however everyone is different! Perhaps you could simply make the app.config file hidden by default?
Or another alternative is to create your own config file which you could save to the App Data folder or even storing the settings in the registry instead.

Here's another factor to consider. Seasoned .Net developers are accustomed to the standard application design, which incorporates using config files in both web apps and desktop apps. If you depart from that practice, you will make it more difficult for any developers who follow you to understand what you have done. Even sa's on the web server may be confused by the absence of a config file.
Since pretty much everybody does it this way, your code does not look "untidy" to others. On the contrary, it would be befuddling not to see a config file where one is expected.

Typically the theory of a configuration file, is that it stores settings you may want to change once you've deployed the application (for something like user preferences). To do this, you need to be storing somewhere external to your application. If you use the default setup, you get "[Your].exe.config". There are many other options you could look at, but nearly every one of them ends up with a file written somewhere, if you providing a mechanism that saves settings of some kind.

I agree with serhio darasd and Quibblesome but you can just delete "solve_np.exe.config" and it'll just use default configs.

After considering what was written in these comments and other searching, I decided that the best way to handle my issue of wanting my Entity Framework connection string to be embedded into my executable instead of needing the MyApplication.exe.config file with my deployed solution was to created a derived class like such:
Public Class MyEFDataContainerLocal
Inherits MyEFDataContainer
Public Sub New()
MyBase.New(My.Settings.MyEFContainerConnectionString)
End Sub
End Class
I just created an Application Setting of type Connection String that contained the same string as what is found in the App.Config file. I just had to replace the &quote;'s with actual quotes.
Then whenever I wanted to use the MyEFDataContainer as in Dim db As New MyEFDataContainer I would just use Dim db As New MyEFDataContainerLocal instead.

C# Application Configuration Data

Hey, I want to store application configuration data. Currently, I'm using INIs but they are too old and now I want to try something new. I'm on .NET platform using C#.
What solutions do I have? app.configs?
The scenario here is like that, I want to let other programs read the configuration data.

Yes, the various .config files (app.config, web.config, etc..) have replaced INI and, to a certain extent, the Registry as the preferred means of storing configuration data for your application.
Any program, .Net or otherwise, can read those files. .Net has the ConfigurationManager class and other languages can simply do XML parsing to get the values they need.

The standard approach with .NET is to use app.config files for application settings and user.config files for user specific settings (the location varies between XP and Vista though).
There's nothing to stop other programs reading the configuration data, you just need to have a configuration setting in the second (or third) application that tells it where to look.

The app.config would be the preferred way of doing things in .NET. Should work fine to read from other applications as well, as long as you give them the right path to the file. And it's just an XML file, so you can read it from non .NET apps as well.

If you're using Visual Studio, you can use Application Settings for this purpose. Just open the automatically added Settings.settings or create another one. They will be automatically available in Properties.Settings.Default and are stored as XML. You can also have multiple settings files for different purposes.
This is a Visual Studio concept rather than a .NET concept.

I often use an SQL table to hold my application settings. I create a singleton class, ususally called AppSettings, that I load with data from the table. The AppSettings class is then used to get the config values instead of directly accessing the config files. For ASP.Net apps, I instantiate the AppSettings class in the Application_Start event in Global.asax.cs.
Doing this gives me a way to allow the user to control some of the app settings, e.g. an email address for notifications. It also can simplify things when maintaining prod, QA, and dev versions of the app (assuming you have separate database instances for each)