ConfigurationSection various names and schema validation

Question

I have custom System.Configuration.ConfigurationSection derived class which represents configuration section in my app.config file. I also have xsd schema document for that XML document. Configuration file has the following (simplified) structure:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<configuration>

  <configSections>

    <section name="sectionOne" type="/*...*/" />
    <section name="sectionTwo" type="/*...*/" />
    <section name="sectionThree" type="/*...*/" />

  </configSections>

  <sectionOne xmlns="http://tempuri.org/MySchema.xsd">

    <Container>

        /*...*/

    </Container>

  </sectionOne >

  <sectionTwo xmlns="http://tempuri.org/MySchema.xsd">

    <Container>

        /*...*/

    </Container>

  </sectionTwo >

  <sectionThree xmlns="http://tempuri.org/MySchema.xsd">

    <Container>

        /*...*/

    </Container>

  </sectionThree >

</configuration>

As we can see, I have a several sections of that type, for various purposes, and I retrieve configuration data using ConfigurationManager class:

ConfigurationManager.GetSection(sectionName);

Because section name is not constant string value, xsd schema validate only elements that are children of the root element (starting from Container tag). Therefore in VS2012, in Error list toolbar, I get a following messages:

Could not find schema information for the element 'http://tempuri.org/MySchema.xsd:SectionOne'.

Could not find schema information for the element 'http://tempuri.org/MySchema.xsd:SectionTwo'.

Could not find schema information for the element 'http://tempuri.org/MySchema.xsd:SectionThree'.

How to fix that validation mechanism.

This is a known bug: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/179927/how-to-resolve-could-not-find-schema-information-for-the-element-attribute-xxx — , Aug 22 '13 at 12:26
It doesn't resolve my problem, because in future my library will be used by other users, and they may rename configuration section as the would like to, and they should not be enforced to modify `xsd` schema definition. — sgnsajgon, Aug 22 '13 at 12:49

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 22 '13 at 15:01

There is no solution that does not involve changing a XSD: it is not possible to write a schema matching elements with arbitrary names. All the possible valid element names must be specified explicitly, so to validate correctly the names of the section elements must be added either to the http://tempuri.org/MySchema.xsd schema or to DotNetConfig.xsd.

ConfigurationSection various names and schema validation

1 Answers1