CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#winforms
Corey Berigan
Corey Berigan

Reputation: 141

How to properly save application data for later use

Ok, so I am working on a c# windows forms application and it uses different types of structures that hold data and display to the user. I want to use a saveDialogBox to allow the user to save the information(i.e configuration, state). The only way I can think to do this is to make a routine that goes through the structures and write the corresponding elements to a text file. Upon loading this routine would be used to load the data back.

This is of course a dumb way to do it I'll admit. Anything I've done in school was only writing to text files. Is there other ways to make some formatted file to save and load from?

I've been looking at serialization to save objects to files. I am not too sure how all this works though. help.

Upvotes: 6

Views: 10386

Answers (2)

matzone
matzone

Reputation: 5719

to save your application setting .. I think these links will help you

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730869%28VS.80%29.aspx http://www.thescarms.com/dotnet/AppSettings.aspx

and

How to use settings in Visual C#

Upvotes: 2

bernieslearnings
bernieslearnings

Reputation: 1664

My 'Old School' way of doing this has always been to save settings during the program execution to a database (providing that you take the time to ensure you're not hammering the database with updates / inserts).

If my application needs to be more efficient AND I need to easily be able to recall the saved settings I serialize to XML using System.Xml.Serialization (from memory). XML serialization is human readable which is helpful (but not the most efficient in terms of processing time).

If I need even more efficiency you can go the whole way and serialize to binary.

I'd suggest reading / understanding http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Vstudio/ms233843.aspx in it's entirety before coming back here. I'd say once you read this you'll be far better equipped to make a decision on which way you want to take your application.

In my experience there aren't that many DUMB ways to solve problems however there is almost always a better way to solve them given enough time and research.

Upvotes: -1

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