A Refactoring I Should Have Been Doing for Years but Forgot, AppSettings

So, It’s always annoyed me that when I want to check an AppSettings variable from app.config or web.config I’ve had to go through code like the following:

<appSettings>
  <add key="AccountStorageURL" value="http://testit.blob.core.windows.net/"  />

public string GetStorageURLOld(string username, string password)
{
   var accountStorageURL = string.Empty;
   if (ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccountStorageURL"] != null)
   {
       accountStorageURL = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings.Get("AccountStorageURL");
   }
   return accountStorageURL;
}

I should have realized a long time ago that this code is equivalent to:

public string GetStorageURL(string username, string password)
{
  return ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccountStorageURL"] ?? string.Empty;
}

Just thought I’d share in case someone else had forgot this also.

HTH’s.