AppFabric Cmdlet - cannot connect to local cluster - powershell

Question

I've been trying to write a simple little Cmdlet to allow me to Set/Get/Remove cache items. The problem I have is that I cannot figure out how to connect to the local cache cluster.
I've tried adding in the usual app.config stuff, but that doesn't seem to get picked up ...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<configSections>
<section name="dataCacheClient" type="Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.DataCacheClientSection, Microsoft.ApplicationServer.Caching.Core, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" allowLocation="true" allowDefinition="Everywhere" />
</configSections>
<dataCacheClient>
<hosts>
<host name="localhost" cachePort="22233" />
</hosts>
</dataCacheClient>
</configuration>
I'd rather not have that config at all. So what I am really asking is what the equivalent C# code is for the following powershell...
Use-CacheCluster
From what I can gather Use-CacheCluster connect to the local cluster if no parameters are supplied

Answer 1

I've just done some spelunking into the AppFabric Powershell code with Reflector to see how it works under the covers. If you call Use-CacheCluster with no parameters e.g. for the local cluster, the code reads the connection string and provider name from the Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\AppFabric\V1.0\Configuration. Unfortunately, it then uses those values to build a series of classes (ClusterConfigElement, CacheAdmin and ClusterHandler) which are all marked as internal, so you can't use them to pick up the current cluster context (for want of a better word) that Powershell is working with.
To make your Cmdlet work, then, I think you need to pass in a hostname (which would be one of the servers in your cluster, and perhaps you could default this to the local machine name) and a port number (which you could default to 22233), and use those values to build a DataCacheServerEndpoint to pass to your DataCacheFactory e.g.
[Cmdlet(VerbsCommon.Set,"Value")]
public class SetValueCommand : Cmdlet
{
[Parameter]
public string Hostname { get; set; }
[Parameter]
public int PortNumber { get; set; }
[Parameter(Mandatory = true)]
public string CacheName { get; set; }
protected override void ProcessRecord()
{
base.ProcessRecord();
// Read the incoming parameters and default to the local machine and port 22233
string host = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Hostname) ? Environment.MachineName : Hostname;
int port = PortNumber == 0 ? 22233 : PortNumber;
// Create an endpoint based on the parameters
DataCacheServerEndpoint endpoint = new DataCacheServerEndpoint(host, port);
// Create a config using the endpoint
DataCacheFactoryConfiguration config = new DataCacheFactoryConfiguration();
config.Servers = new List<DataCacheServerEndpoint> { endpoint };
// Create a factory using the config
DataCacheFactory factory = new DataCacheFactory(config);
// Get a reference to the cache so we can now start doing useful work...
DataCache cache = factory.GetCache(CacheName);
...
}
}

Answer 2

The problem is that the call:
DataCacheFactoryConfiguration config = new DataCacheFactoryConfiguration();
inside Cmdlet mothods produces an error sounding like "Cannot initialize DataCacheFactoryConfiguration".