It seems like the closest thing to what you're describing would be placing the setting (device name) in the appsettings.json file, then retrieving the value by injecting IConfiguration (Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.IConfiguration) into your blazor component.

@page "/SomePage"
@inject IConfiguration config

<div>@deviceName</div>

@code {
    string deviceName;
    
    protected override void OnInitialized()
    {
        deviceName = config.GetSection("DeviceName").Value;
    }
}

And your appsettings.json / appsettings.Development.json would include something like this:

{
  "ConnectionStrings": {
    ...
  },
  "Logging": {
    ...
  },
  "DeviceName": "01"
}

Your component could then use the specific device name when communicating with your service.

Hi Selliot,

Thanks for your reply, sorry for my delayed reply (I've been away).

This looks like it could work, but if I find info about appsettings.json that info says that this file should be located in the startup folder.

And if you are using a client side application , than that will be fine.

However I am using a serverside application.

Is there a location on an Android machine where I can place this appsettings.json file (is that also the name, or should it have a different name)?

Or does this only work for Blazor client side??

Kind regards,

Clemens Linders

You are correct, it's typically not a good idea to put an appsettings.json file in a client. You definitely don't want to put secrets/keys in the client anywhere, since it's possible to decompile and read the code. At a glance, I wasn't sure what your particular need was and I just assumed that's what you were asking for anyway. 

If you're just having them access through a web browser, then maybe all you really need to do is create user accounts (handheld01, handheld02, etc...) and have them login, then authenticate and process the data in the API based on that. Another benefit to this route is that it would be easy to replace a broken device.

If you're installing an app (built in something like MAUI or maybe even the experimental Blazor Mobile Bindings in Xamarin), it may be able to access the device name, since a native app gets more access to the device. Even if you can access the device name, it's still a good idea to require authentication before trusting any data being provided to the API.

Hi Selliot,

We don't need to pass connectionstrings or anything secret.

The workaround I found is using a parameter when accessing the Blazor server app.

Starting the Blazor server side app is a matter of clicking on an icon, and in this icon it calls the corresponding http address and it passes a parameter for the handheld number.

All we need to do now is (one time) change this parameter per handheld.

I did wonder if it was possible to do this in a manner as you described, but than I would need to know where to place this json file and what name to give it.

Kind regards,

Clemens Linders