Octopus messing with special characters when updating app.config files

Legacy Execution
1

I was using the < character in my password and when the app.config was updated the < was changed to <
This obviously caused a problem logging into the database.

2

Hi Greg,

Thanks for getting in touch. This is by design as the attribute values in the app.config file should be XML escaped. I did a quick test and &lt; was read out as <. My App.Config looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <appSettings>
    <add key="Password" value="My&lt;Pass"/>
  </appSettings>
  <connectionStrings>
    <add name="db" connectionString="Server=myServerAddress;Database=myDataBase;User Id=myUsername;Password=My&lt;Pass"/>
  </connectionStrings>
</configuration>

And my test program like this:

static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Console.WriteLine(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Password"]);
            Console.WriteLine(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["Db"].ConnectionString);
            Console.ReadLine();
        }

The output:

My<Pass
Server=myServerAddress;Database=myDataBase;User Id=myUsername;Password=My<Pass

Please let me know if I have misunderstood your question, or you are still having problems.

Robert W