Web.Config Transform Individual AppSettings to ConfigSource

Question

I'd like to transform the appsettings section of my local web.config file from a bunch of individual settings for my local dev work, to a configSource file path attribute for publishing to client servers.

Basically from this:

<appSettings>
    <add key="setting1" value="devVal1"></add> 
    <add key="setting2" value="devVal2"></add>
    <add key="setting3" value="devVal3"></add>
</appSettings>

to this:

<appSettings configSource="clientSettings.config" />

---

This partial solution adds the configSource attribute.

<appSettings xdt:Transform="SetAttributes(configSource)" configSource="clientSettings.config"/>

But I'm not sure how to remove all the individual settings as well (I think the configSource will override them anyway, but I'd prefer to not have them there at all, to avoid having irrelevant dev settings in each of my client's web.config files)

Answer 1

A bit more perseverance lead me to the answer. Apply the "RemoveAll" transform to an add element within the appSetting.

<appSettings xdt:Transform="SetAttributes(configSource)" configSource="clientSettings.config">
    <add xdt:Transform="RemoveAll"/>
</appSetting>

Hope this is of use to someone in the future (if only as an example of why you should do 30 minutes of extra work before reaching for the 'Ask Question' button)...