hostingEnvironment Element (ASP.NET Settings Schema) 

Defines configuration settings that control the behavior of the application hosting environment.

<hostingEnvironment idleTimeout="HH:MM:SS" 
                    shadowCopyBinAssemblies="true|false" 
                    shutdownTimeout="number"/>

Attributes and Elements

The following sections describe attributes, child elements, and parent elements.

Attributes

Attribute	Description
idleTimeout	Optional TimeSpan attribute. Sets the amount of time, in minutes, before unloading an inactive application. Default is Infinite.
shadowCopyBinAssemblies	Optional Boolean attribute. Sets a Boolean value indicating whether the assemblies of an application in the Bin directory are shadow copied to the application's ASP.NET Temporary Files directory. Default is true.
shutdownTimeout	Optional TimeSpan attribute. Sets the amount of time, in seconds, to gracefully shut down the application. Default is 30.

Child Elements

None.

Parent Elements

Element	Description
configuration	The required root element in every configuration file used by the common language runtime and .NET Framework applications.
system.web	Specifies the root element for the ASP.NET configuration settings in a configuration file. Contains configuration elements that configure ASP.NET Web applications and control how the applications behave.

Remarks

Default Configuration

The following default hostingEnvironment element is not explicitly configured in the machine configuration file or in the root Web.config file, but is the default configuration returned by an application in the .NET Framework version 2.0.

Note
The value "Infinite" is defined by the system to be MaxValue.

<hostingEnvironment idleTimeout="Infinite" 
                    shutdownTimeout="30" 
                    shadowCopyBinAssemblies="true" />

Example

The following example shows how to control the behavior of the application hosting environment.

<system.web>
    <hostingEnvironment idleTimeout="20"
                        shutdownTimeout="30"/>
</system.web>

Element Information

Configuration Section Handler	System.Web.Configuration.HostingEnvironmentSection
Configuration Member	System.Web.Configuration.SystemWebSectionGroup.HostingEnvironment
Configurable Locations	Machine.config Root level Web.config Application level Web.config
Requirements	IIS 6.0 .NET Framework 2.0 Visual Studio 2005

See Also

Tasks

How to: Configure Specific Directories Using Location Settings
How to: Lock ASP.NET Configuration Settings

Reference

system.web Element (ASP.NET Settings Schema)
configuration Element (General Settings Schema)
System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironment
System.Configuration
System.Web.Configuration

Concepts

ASP.NET Configuration File Hierarchy and Inheritance
Securing ASP.NET Configuration
ASP.NET Configuration Scenarios

Other Resources

General Configuration Settings (ASP.NET)
ASP.NET Configuration Settings
Configuring ASP.NET Applications
ASP.NET Configuration Files
ASP.NET Configuration API