How do I supply extra info to IApplicationSettingsProvider class?

Question

Perhaps this question has been asked before in a different way, but I haven’t been able to find it.

I have one or more plugin adapter assemblies in my application all ha

Answer 1

I found an answer albeit a bit convoluted and requires going deep into the architecture of .NET, which isn't well documented. Although ApplicationSettingsBase and IApplicationSettingsProvider are decoupled, there is a bit of recoupling involved to make this work. The solution involves modifying the Settings or your own customized version like so:

[SettingsProvider(typeof(CustomSettingProviders.MySettingsProvider))]
internal sealed partial class Settings {

    public Settings(string name)
    {
         this.Context.Add("Name", name);
    }

Alternatively, you can get around making changes to this class by setting the Context before it's used like so:

        settings.Context.Add("Name", "hello");

In the settings SetPropertyValues of the MySettingsProvider, you can actually grab the data and do something with it:

    public override void SetPropertyValues(SettingsContext context, SettingsPropertyValueCollection propvals)
    {
        if (context.Contains("Name"))
            ApplicationName = context["Name"].ToString();

To use the settings, simply instantiate the class with the parametrized constructor, or alternatively set the Context before using it:

        var settings = new Properties.Settings("Hello") { Setting1 = "Hello, is anyone home!" }
        // alternative: settings.Context.Add("Name", "hello");
        settings.Save();