ASP.NET Core - How to decrypt and use the encrypted configuration section?

Question

I've followed this answer and now I'm not sure how to get the correct values back and use them in the code.

This is the configuration section i would like to use:

  "ConnectionStrings": {
    "connString1": "CfDJ8P1kYd0KR1J........",
    "connString2": "CfDJ8P1kYd0KR1J........"
  }

And this is my Startup.cs file:

        public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
        {
            services.AddMvc().SetCompatibilityVersion(CompatibilityVersion.Version_2_1);


            services.AddProtectedConfiguration();

            services.ConfigureProtected<ProtectedConnectionStrings>(Configuration.GetSection("ConnectionStrings"));

            services.AddDbContext<MyDBContext>(options =>
            options.UseSqlServer(Configuration.GetSection("ConnectionStrings")["connString2"]));
.
.
.

But the values i get from the configuration are not decrypted.
Furthermore, the object returned from Configuration.GetSection() is a regular ConfigurationSection object (and not the custom ProtectedConfigurationSection object i have).

Are the encrypted values supposed to be stored in the appsettings.json file? or they are stored in the key-.... file?

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

You have to use DI to get unencrypted values from your service.

public class MySQLClass
{
    public MySQLClass(IOptions<ConnectionStrings> connectionStrings)
    {
        string unencryptedCS = connectionStrings.Value.connString1;
    }
}