Config Transforms

    In this article you can learn how to use config transform files to apply environment specific configuration and settings to your Umbraco Cloud project.

    What are Config Transforms?

    Config Transforms are a way to transform your config files without changing the actual config file.

    To transform a config file, you need to create a new file in the same folder with the following naming convention: {config-file name}.{environment}.xdt.config.

    If you want to do a transform on your Web.config file for the Live environment of your project, the config transform you need to create will look like this:

    Web.live.xdt.config

    The {environment} part needs to be replaced with the target environment, for which there are currently 3 possibilities for each project:

    1. development
    2. staging
    3. live

    This file needs to be created on a local clone of your project, as this will ensure that the file is added to the project repository.

    When the file is deployed to the Live environment the transforms will be applied to the Web.config file in the wwwroot folder. In the case that you also have a Development and/or Staging environment, the Web.live.xdt.config will only transform the Web.config on the Live environment.

    For each deploy, the Umbraco Cloud engine searches for all of the .{environment}.xdt.config files in your site and applies the transforms. This means you can transform any config file, for example ~/config/Dashboard.config by creating a ~/config/Dashboard.live.xdt.config file. Make sure the transform file follows the naming convention and it exists in the same folder as the config file you want to transform.

    Using config transforms to remove and/or add sections to config files is currently only possible for the Web.config file.

    Syntax and testing

    When creating config transforms you need to follow these three rules:

    1. Use the correct file-naming convention
    2. Place the transform file in the same folder as the file you want to transform
    3. Follow the correct Config Transform syntax

    Before applying the config transform files to your environments we recommend that you run a test using this tool: Webconfig Transformation Tester

    Using the tool will let you test whether the transform file transforms your config files correctly. The tool can be used for all config files.

    Examples

    Rewrite rules are often something you only want to apply to your Live environment. To avoid the rewrites being applied to your Development and/or Staging environments, you can create a transform file to apply the rewrite rules to your Live environment only.

    Here is an example of how that config transform would look:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration xmlns:xdt="http://schemas.microsoft.com/XML-Document-Transform">
    <system.webServer>
        <rewrite xdt:Transform="InsertIfMissing">
            <rules>
                <rule xdt:Locator="Match(name)" xdt:Transform="InsertIfMissing" name="Redirects umbraco.io to actual domain" stopProcessing="true">
                    <match url=".*" />
                    <conditions>
                        <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^(.*)?.s1.umbraco.io$" />
                        <add input="{REQUEST_URI}" negate="true" pattern="^/umbraco" />
                        <add input="{REQUEST_URI}" negate="true" pattern="^/DependencyHandler.axd" />
                        <add input="{REQUEST_URI}" negate="true" pattern="^/App_Plugins" />
                        <add input="{REQUEST_URI}" negate="true" pattern="localhost" />
                    </conditions>
                    <action type="Redirect" url="http://swato.dk/{R:0}" appendQueryString="true" redirectType="Permanent" />
                </rule>
            </rules>
        </rewrite>
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>

    This config transform will add a new <rule> to <configuration><system.webServer><rewrite><rules>. The xdt:Transform attribute is used to tell the system what to transform. In this case the value is InsertIfMissing, which means it will add the section if it's not already in the config file. In order to be able to identify the correct section the xdt:Locator attribute is used to match the value of the name attribute.

    Forced transforms

    Whenever you deploy changes to any of your environments we force some config transforms to help make sure optimal settings are set for your website.

    Web.config forced transforms

    These are the transforms we do on the root Web.config file regardless of the custom transforms you might have specified above, we enforce these transforms always.

    On live environments only:

    • We set debug="false" on the compilation node in system.web
    • We set mode="RemoteOnly" on the customErrors node in system.web

    On all other Cloud environments:

    • We set debug="true" on the compilation node in system.web
    • We set mode="Off" on the customErrors node in system.web
    • We set waitChangeNotification="3" maxWaitChangeNotification="10" on the httpRuntime node in system.web
    • We set numRecompilesBeforeAppRestart="50" on the compilation node in system.web
    • We set the smtp host="" if the host was set to 127.0.0.1

    Note that for the compilation debug and the customErrors mode there is a toggle in the Umbraco Cloud portal to temporarily toggle the opposite setting. This will change the debug/customErrors mode until the next deploy to this environment. On each deploy the forced transforms will be performed again.

    Toggle debug mode

    Baseline config transforms

    It is possible to apply config transforms for specific child sites from a baseline. For more info see Baseline Configuration Files documentation

    Including transforms in Umbraco packages

    For package developers it can be useful to add a config transform that needs to happen on each environment. As an example, let's say we're making a package called EnvironmentColor. You want to set an AppSetting in Web.config to a different color in each environment. It could be be red for the Live environment, orange for Staging and yellow for Development.

    We need to create 3 transform files named after the package. A good convention is to use your company name and the package name to make sure that there won't be any clashes on the filenames. We'll use the name AcmeEnvironmentColor:

    • ~/AcmeEnvironmentColor.Web.development.xdt.config
    • ~/AcmeEnvironmentColor.Web.staging.xdt.config
    • ~/AcmeEnvironmentColor.Web.live.xdt.config

    Again, these types of prefixed files can be placed next to any other file so if you also need to transform ~/config/Dashboard.config specifically for your package, then you can create three transform files for that as well, e.g.:

    • ~/config/AcmeEnvironmentColor.Dashboard.development.xdt.config
    • ~/config/AcmeEnvironmentColor.Dashboard.staging.xdt.config
    • ~/config/AcmeEnvironmentColor.Dashboard.live.xdt.config