My understanding is that, in .NET Core, child appsettings files, e.g. appsettings.development.json, inherit from the parent appsettings.json (in much the same way that, say, C# derived classes inherit from parent classes, unless explicitly overridden) – as long as in your startup logic you include code like the following:

IConfigurationBuilder configBuilder = new ConfigurationBuilder()
    .AddJsonFile("parent_appsettings")
    .AddJsonFile("child_appsettings");
    
configbuilder.Build();

This is not happening, however, in my situation. I have a parent appsettings.json defined somewhat like the following:

{
  "Section1" {
    "Key1": "Value1"
  },
  "Section2" {
    "Key2": "Value2"
  }
}

And in my child appsettings.development.json I have something like this:

{
  "Section2" {
    "Key2": "OverriddenValue2"
  }
}

While this works when I run config.GetSection("Section2").GetValue("Key2") (i,e, the value OverriddenValue2 is returned), it does not work when I try config.GetSection("Section1").GetValue("Key1"). It thinks the section/key is missing, instead of automatically pulling down the section/value from the parent appsettings.

Is this how it’s supposed to work?