Config sources convert dots to colons in config keys

[Eilon]

Not sure why we do this kind of normalization. It took quite a while to debug this when porting a customer application from MVC 5 using web.config to using MVC 6 with config.json.

Repro:

Have this config.json file:

{
    "foo.bar":  "foo.bar value"
}

And this MVC controller:

public IActionResult Index()
{
    var config = new Configuration().AddJsonFile("config.json");
    var configData = new StringBuilder();
    foreach (var key in new[] { "foo.bar", "foo:bar" })
    {
        configData.AppendFormat("[{0}] = {1}<br/>", key, config[key]);
    }
    return Content(configData.ToString());
}

And run it.

Note that the foo.bar key has no value, whereas the foo:bar key does (even though that's nowhere in my config file). Very confusing.

[thereverand]

It's swapping one hierarchy delimiter for the proper one in the end context. That would seem like pretty good standard behavior.

[Eilon]

@thereverand I'm not sure I agree with that assessment. It struck me as creating an artificial and arbitrary hierarchy delimiter when previously there was none. There's a difference between config hierarchy and my own conceptual hierarchy. If there is a desire to not support dots in config keys, that's one thing (though I think that would be bad), but why convert dots to colons? Why not also convert slashes, backslashes, hyphens, dollar signs, etc.?

[Praburaj]

Fixed now.