ConfigurationManager and AppSettings in universal (UWP) app

In my specific use case I needed to use an external file that is not tracked by source control. There are two ways to access data from resource or configuration files.

One is to open and parse a configuration file. Given a file sample.txt with Build Action Content (Copy to Output Directory doesn't matter), we can read it with

var uri = new System.Uri("ms-appx:///sample.txt");
var sampleFile = await Windows.Storage.StorageFile.GetFileFromApplicationUriAsync(uri);

or

var packageFolder = Windows.ApplicationModel.Package.Current.InstalledLocation;
var sampleFile = await packageFolder.GetFileAsync("sample.txt");

followed by

var contents = await Windows.Storage.FileIO.ReadTextAsync(sampleFile);

Alternatively, we can use Resources. Add a new Resource item to the project, called resourcesFile.resw. To access data, use:

var resources = new Windows.ApplicationModel.Resources.ResourceLoader("resourcesFile");
var token = resources.GetString("secret");

I wrote more verbose answer in a blog post Custom resource files in UWP

It's an old question, but here my solution :

• Create a partial class Config.cs (for example) with all the properties you'r needed
• Add a partial method void Init()
• Call Init in the constructor
• Create an other file Config.partial.cs with the void Init() method filling all your properties

-> Use #if DEBUG / #else / #endif to switch from Debug/Release -> Use exclude Config.partial.cs from Github to not import it in the repository

Now it compile and it's not in the repository Alternatively you can set in Config.cs default (not secret) datas.

Config.cs :

public partial class Config
{

  public Config()
  {
      Init();
  }

  partial void Init();

  public string ApiKey{ get; private set; }= "DefaultValueAPIKEY";
}

Config.partial.cs

public partial class Config 
{

  partial void Init()
  {
#if DEBUG

    this.ApiKey = "DebugAPIKEY";

#else

    this.ApiKey = "ReleaseAPIKEY";

#endif
  }
}