@BillMacPherson my solution for being able to setup something similar to a Settings.settings .net file (so a typed config settings file) in an addin is to just design it in json: just add a json file in your project and set it up with Build Action "Content" and Copy to output directory "Copy always". In the json you can put any typed variable you need, then you provide a model class where you can deserialize the json into with a very simple function, such as:
internal static ConfigSettings InitializeConfigSettings()
{
try
{
//file name is settings.json and it's inside a subfolder named Resources, you can change those name in any way
string settingsPath = Path.Combine(Path.GetDirectoryName(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location), "Resources", "settings.json");
if (!File.Exists(settingsPath))
throw new ApplicationException($"Config file <{settingsPath}> not found");
string jsonContent = File.ReadAllText(settingsPath);
return JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<ConfigSettings>(jsonContent);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Logger.Error("Error retrieving settings", ex);
throw;
}
}
In this example I deserialize json content with newtonsoft.json into my model class, ConfigSettings, which I assign to a static global variable to use across the application.
The nice thing with this solution is that it is quite easy and fast to setup compared to the "official" solution, but still it allows you to change your settings "on the fly": you can do it by extracting the json file from the addin, change what you need, and then copy the file back in the addin (you can do it easily adding .zip extension to the addin). No recompilation is necessary and if you just have a bunch of setting values to change you can do it in a very similar way to what you are accustomed to do in .net applications outside addins.
