How to publish environment specific appsettings in .Net core app?

Question

I have 3 environment specific appsettings files in my .Net core application

in project.json I have setup publishOptions

Answer 1

I recently had to find a solution for this as well and I accomplished it by adding some settings to the .csproj file and a minor change to Program.cs.

    
    
        true
        full
        DEBUG;TRACE
        Development
    
    
        pdbonly
        true
        Production
    
    
        pdbonly
        true
        Staging
    
    
        
        
    
    
        
        
        
    

    
        
    

To explain it a little, I added an element for each configuration so it can be used during the build process. I'm using appsettings.{EnvironmentName}.json (i.e. appsettings.Staging.json) just as an "overrides" file so I just have it rename the necessary JSON file during the build process. When you run dotnet publish -c Stage, for example, it will publish the appsettings.Staging.json file into the publish folder and rename it to appsettings.overrides.json. In your Program.cs, you will just need to include the appsettings.overrides.json file as well:

    .AddJsonFile("appsettings.json", optional: false, reloadOnChange: true)
    .AddJsonFile($"appsettings.{env.EnvironmentName}.json", optional: true, reloadOnChange: true)
    .AddJsonFile($"appsettings.overrides.json", optional: true, reloadOnChange: true)

I hope it helps!

Side note: I include appsettings.*.json and set it to CopyToOutputDirectory="Never" just so they still show up in Visual Studio when developing. Otherwise, if you only want the current environment's appsettings file to show in VS, just remove that line from the csproj file.