Best practice to save application settings in a Wi

Question

What I want to achieve is very simple: I have a Windows Forms (.NET 3.5) application that uses a path for reading information. This path can be modified by the user, by using the options form I provide.

Now, I want to save the path value to a file for later use. This would be one of the many settings saved to this file. This file would sit directly in the application folder.

I understand three options are available:

• ConfigurationSettings file (appname.exe.config)
• Registry
• Custom XML file

I read that the .NET configuration file is not foreseen for saving values back to it. As for the registry, I would like to get as far away from it as possible.

Does this mean that I should use a custom XML file to save configuration settings? If so, I would like to see code example of that (C#).

I have seen other discussions on this subject, but it is still not clear to me.

Answer 1

The registry is a no-go. You're not sure whether the user which uses your application, has sufficient rights to write to the registry.

You can use the app.config file to save application-level settings (that are the same for each user who uses your application).

I would store user-specific settings in an XML file, which would be saved in Isolated Storage or in the SpecialFolder.ApplicationData directory.

Next to that, as from .NET 2.0, it is possible to store values back to the app.config file.

Answer 2

The ApplicationSettings class doesn't support saving settings to the app.config file. That's very much by design, apps that run with a properly secured user account (think Vista UAC) do not have write access to the program's installation folder.

You can fight the system with the ConfigurationManager class. But the trivial workaround is to go into the Settings designer and change the setting's scope to User. If that causes hardships (say, the setting is relevant to every user), you should put your Options feature in a separate program so you can ask for the privilege elevation prompt. Or forego using a setting.

Answer 3

As far as I can tell, .NET does support persisting settings using the built-in application settings facility:

The Application Settings feature of Windows Forms makes it easy to create, store, and maintain custom application and user preferences on the client computer. With Windows Forms application settings, you can store not only application data such as database connection strings, but also user-specific data, such as user application preferences. Using Visual Studio or custom managed code, you can create new settings, read them from and write them to disk, bind them to properties on your forms, and validate settings data prior to loading and saving. - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/k4s6c3a0.aspx

Answer 4

public static class SettingsExtensions
{
    public static bool TryGetValue<T>(this Settings settings, string key, out T value)
    {
        if (settings.Properties[key] != null)
        {
            value = (T) settings[key];
            return true;
        }

        value = default(T);
        return false;
    }

    public static bool ContainsKey(this Settings settings, string key)
    {
        return settings.Properties[key] != null;
    }

    public static void SetValue<T>(this Settings settings, string key, T value)
    {
        if (settings.Properties[key] == null)
        {
            var p = new SettingsProperty(key)
            {
                PropertyType = typeof(T),
                Provider = settings.Providers["LocalFileSettingsProvider"],
                SerializeAs = SettingsSerializeAs.Xml
            };
            p.Attributes.Add(typeof(UserScopedSettingAttribute), new UserScopedSettingAttribute());
            var v = new SettingsPropertyValue(p);
            settings.Properties.Add(p);
            settings.Reload();
        }
        settings[key] = value;
        settings.Save();
    }
}

Answer 5

If you are planning on saving to a file within the same directory as your executable, here's a nice solution that uses the JSON format:

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Web.Script.Serialization;

namespace MiscConsole
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            MySettings settings = MySettings.Load();
            Console.WriteLine("Current value of 'myInteger': " + settings.myInteger);
            Console.WriteLine("Incrementing 'myInteger'...");
            settings.myInteger++;
            Console.WriteLine("Saving settings...");
            settings.Save();
            Console.WriteLine("Done.");
            Console.ReadKey();
        }

        class MySettings : AppSettings<MySettings>
        {
            public string myString = "Hello World";
            public int myInteger = 1;
        }
    }

    public class AppSettings<T> where T : new()
    {
        private const string DEFAULT_FILENAME = "settings.json";

        public void Save(string fileName = DEFAULT_FILENAME)
        {
            File.WriteAllText(fileName, (new JavaScriptSerializer()).Serialize(this));
        }

        public static void Save(T pSettings, string fileName = DEFAULT_FILENAME)
        {
            File.WriteAllText(fileName, (new JavaScriptSerializer()).Serialize(pSettings));
        }

        public static T Load(string fileName = DEFAULT_FILENAME)
        {
            T t = new T();
            if(File.Exists(fileName))
                t = (new JavaScriptSerializer()).Deserialize<T>(File.ReadAllText(fileName));
            return t;
        }
    }
}

Answer 6

The registry/configurationSettings/XML argument still seems very active. I've used them all, as the technology has progressed, but my favourite is based on Threed's system combined with Isolated Storage.

The following sample allows storage of an objects named properties to a file in isolated storage. Such as:

AppSettings.Save(myobject, "Prop1,Prop2", "myFile.jsn");

Properties may be recovered using:

AppSettings.Load(myobject, "myFile.jsn");

It is just a sample, not suggestive of best practices.

internal static class AppSettings
{
    internal static void Save(object src, string targ, string fileName)
    {
        Dictionary<string, object> items = new Dictionary<string, object>();
        Type type = src.GetType();

        string[] paramList = targ.Split(new char[] { ',' });
        foreach (string paramName in paramList)
            items.Add(paramName, type.GetProperty(paramName.Trim()).GetValue(src, null));

        try
        {
            // GetUserStoreForApplication doesn't work - can't identify.
            // application unless published by ClickOnce or Silverlight
            IsolatedStorageFile storage = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForAssembly();
            using (IsolatedStorageFileStream stream = new IsolatedStorageFileStream(fileName, FileMode.Create, storage))
            using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(stream))
            {
                writer.Write((new JavaScriptSerializer()).Serialize(items));
            }

        }
        catch (Exception) { }   // If fails - just don't use preferences
    }

    internal static void Load(object tar, string fileName)
    {
        Dictionary<string, object> items = new Dictionary<string, object>();
        Type type = tar.GetType();

        try
        {
            // GetUserStoreForApplication doesn't work - can't identify
            // application unless published by ClickOnce or Silverlight
            IsolatedStorageFile storage = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForAssembly();
            using (IsolatedStorageFileStream stream = new IsolatedStorageFileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open, storage))
            using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream))
            {
                items = (new JavaScriptSerializer()).Deserialize<Dictionary<string, object>>(reader.ReadToEnd());
            }
        }
        catch (Exception) { return; }   // If fails - just don't use preferences.

        foreach (KeyValuePair<string, object> obj in items)
        {
            try
            {
                tar.GetType().GetProperty(obj.Key).SetValue(tar, obj.Value, null);
            }
            catch (Exception) { }
        }
    }
}