Avoid web.config inheritance in child web application using inheritInChildApplications

Blankman_39677 0
Viewed 202452

I am trying to add

<location inheritInChildApplications="false">

to my parent web application's web.config but it doesn't seem to be working.

My parent's web.config has:

<configuration>
    <configSections>
    </configSections>

    // 10 or so custom config sections like log4net, hibernate,

    <connectionStrings>
    </connectionStrings>

    <appSettings>
    </appSettings>

    <system.diagnostics>
    </system.diagnostics>

    <system.web>
         <webParts>
         </webParts>
         <membership>
         </membership>

         <compilation>
         </compilation>
    </system.web>

    <location ..>
    <system.web>
        </system.web>
    </location>

    <system.webServer>
    </system.webServer>

My child web application is setup as an application in IIS, and is inheriting from the parent's web.config which is causing problems.

Where exactly should I place the

<location inheritInChildApplications="false">

so it ignores all the various web.config settings?

iis-7 web-config configuration asp.net
7 Answers

It needs to go directly under the root <configuration> node and you need to set a path like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
    <location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false"> 
        <!-- Stuff that shouldn't be inherited goes in here -->
    </location>
</configuration>

A better way to handle configuration inheritance is to use a <clear/> in the child config wherever you don't want to inherit. So if you didn't want to inherit the parent config's connection strings you would do something like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>
    <connectionStrings>
        <clear/>
        <!-- Child config's connection strings -->
    </connectionStrings>
</configuration>
Andrew_Hare_342110
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