c - approach for saving user settings in a WPF application

Question

What approach do you recommend for persisting user settings in a WPF windows  desktop  application    Note that the idea is that the user can change their settings at run time  and then can close down the application  then when starting up the application later the application will use the current settings   Effectively then it will appear as if the application settings do not change     Q1 - Database or other approach   I do have a sqlite database that I will be using anyway hence using a table in the database would be as good as any approach   Q2 - If Database  What database table design   One table with columns for different data types that one might have  e g  string  long  DateTime etc  OR just a table with a string for the value upon which you have to serialize and de-serialize the values   I m thinking the first would be easier  and if there aren t many settings the overhead isn t much      Q3 - Could Application Settings be used for this   If so are there any special tasks required to enable the persistence here   Also what would happen regarding usage of the  default  value in the Application Settings designer in this case   Would the default override any settings that were saved between running the application   or would you need to NOT use the default value

User · Answer

The long running most typical approach to this question is: Isolated Storage.

Serialize your control state to XML or some other format (especially easily if you're saving Dependency Properties with WPF), then save the file to the user's isolated storage.

If you do want to go the app setting route, I tried something similar at one point myself...though the below approach could easily be adapted to use Isolated Storage:

class SettingsManager
{
    public static void LoadSettings(FrameworkElement sender, Dictionary<FrameworkElement, DependencyProperty> savedElements)
    {
        EnsureProperties(sender, savedElements);
        foreach (FrameworkElement element in savedElements.Keys)
        {
            try
            {
                element.SetValue(savedElements[element], Properties.Settings.Default[sender.Name + "." + element.Name]);
            }
            catch (Exception ex) { }
        }
    }

    public static void SaveSettings(FrameworkElement sender, Dictionary<FrameworkElement, DependencyProperty> savedElements)
    {
        EnsureProperties(sender, savedElements);
        foreach (FrameworkElement element in savedElements.Keys)
        {
            Properties.Settings.Default[sender.Name + "." + element.Name] = element.GetValue(savedElements[element]);
        }
        Properties.Settings.Default.Save();
    }

    public static void EnsureProperties(FrameworkElement sender, Dictionary<FrameworkElement, DependencyProperty> savedElements)
    {
        foreach (FrameworkElement element in savedElements.Keys)
        {
            bool hasProperty =
                Properties.Settings.Default.Properties[sender.Name + "." + element.Name] != null;

            if (!hasProperty)
            {
                SettingsAttributeDictionary attributes = new SettingsAttributeDictionary();
                UserScopedSettingAttribute attribute = new UserScopedSettingAttribute();
                attributes.Add(attribute.GetType(), attribute);

                SettingsProperty property = new SettingsProperty(sender.Name + "." + element.Name,
                    savedElements[element].DefaultMetadata.DefaultValue.GetType(), Properties.Settings.Default.Providers["LocalFileSettingsProvider"], false, null, SettingsSerializeAs.String, attributes, true, true);
                Properties.Settings.Default.Properties.Add(property);
            }
        }
        Properties.Settings.Default.Reload();
    }
}

.....and....

  Dictionary<FrameworkElement, DependencyProperty> savedElements = new Dictionary<FrameworkElement, DependencyProperty>();

public Window_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) {
           savedElements.Add(firstNameText, TextBox.TextProperty);
                savedElements.Add(lastNameText, TextBox.TextProperty);

            SettingsManager.LoadSettings(this, savedElements);
}

private void Window_Closing(object sender, System.ComponentModel.CancelEventArgs e)
        {
            SettingsManager.SaveSettings(this, savedElements);
        }

User · Answer

Update  Nowadays I would use JSON   I also prefer to go with serialization to file  XML files fits mostly all requirements  You can use the ApplicationSettings build in but those have some restrictions and a defined but  for me  very strange behavior where they stored  I used them a lot and they work  But if you want to have full control how and where they stored I use another approach    Make a class Somewhere with all your settings  I named it MySettings Implement Save and Read for persistence Use them in you application-code   Advantages    Very Simple approach   One Class for Settings  Load  Save  All your Settings are type safe  You can simplify or extend the logic to your needs  Versioning  many Profiles per User  etc   It works very well in any case  Database  WinForms  WPF  Service  etc     You can define where to store the XML files   You can find them and manipulate them either by code or manual  It works for any deployment method I can imagine    Disadvantages   - You have to think about where to store your settings files   But you can just use your installation folder   Here is a simple example  not tested -  public class MySettings       public string Setting1   get  set        public List lt string gt  Setting2   get  set         public void Save string filename                using  StreamWriter sw   new StreamWriter filename                         XmlSerializer xmls   new XmlSerializer typeof MySettings                xmls Serialize sw  this                       public MySettings Read string filename                using  StreamReader sw   new StreamReader filename                         XmlSerializer xmls   new XmlSerializer typeof MySettings                return xmls Deserialize sw  as MySettings                      And here is how to use it  It s possible to load default values or override them with the user s settings by just checking if user settings exist   public class MyApplicationLogic       public const string UserSettingsFilename    settings xml       public string  DefaultSettingspath            Assembly GetEntryAssembly   Location               Settings      UserSettingsFilename       public string  UserSettingsPath            Assembly GetEntryAssembly   Location               Settings  UserSettings               UserSettingsFilename       public MyApplicationLogic                    if default settings exist         if  File Exists  UserSettingsPath               this Settings   Settings Read  UserSettingsPath           else             this Settings   Settings Read  DefaultSettingspath             public MySettings Settings   get  private set         public void SaveUserSettings                 Settings Save  UserSettingsPath             maybe someone get s inspired by this approach  This is how I do it now for many years and I m quite happy with that

User · Answer

I typically do this sort of thing by defining a custom  Serializable  settings class and simply serializing it to disk  In your case you could just as easily store it as a string blob in your SQLite database

User · Answer

You can store your settings info as Strings of XML in the Settings Default  Create some classes to store your configuration data and make sure they are  Serializable   Then  with the following helpers  you can serialize instances of these objects--or List lt T gt   or arrays T    etc   of them--to String  Store each of these various strings in its own respective Settings Default slot in your WPF application s Settings   To recover the objects the next time the app starts  read the Settings string of interest and Deserialize to the expected type T  which this time must be explcitly specified as a type argument to Deserialize lt T gt     public static String Serialize lt T gt  T t        using  StringWriter sw   new StringWriter        using  XmlWriter xw   XmlWriter Create sw                 new XmlSerializer typeof T   Serialize xw  t           return sw GetStringBuilder   ToString             public static T Deserialize lt T gt  String s xml        using  XmlReader xw   XmlReader Create new StringReader s xml            return  T new XmlSerializer typeof T   Deserialize xw

User · Answer

Apart from a database  you can also have following options to save user related settings    registry under HKEY CURRENT USER  in a file in AppData folder using Settings file in WPF and by setting its scope as User

User · Answer

You can use Application Settings for this  using database is not the best option considering the time consumed to read and write the settings specially if you use web services   Here are few links which explains how to achieve this and use them in WPF - User Settings in WPF Quick WPF Tip  How to bind to WPF application resources and settings  A Configurable Window for WPF

User · Answer

In my experience storing all the settings in a database table is the best solution  Don t even worry about performance  Today s databases are fast and can easily store thousands columns in a table  I learned this the hard way - before I was serilizing deserializing - nightmare  Storing it in local file or registry has one big problem - if you have to support your app and computer is off - user is not in front of it - there is nothing you can do     if setings are in DB - you can changed them and viola not to mention that you can compare the settings

User · Answer

In all the places I ve worked  database has been mandatory because of application support  As Adam said  the user might not be at his desk or the machine might be off  or you might want to quickly change someone s configuration or assign a new-joiner a default  or team member s  config  If the settings are likely to grow as new versions of the application are released  you might want to store the data as blobs which can then be deserialized by the application  This is especially useful if you use something like Prism which discovers modules  as you can t know what settings a module will return  The blobs could be keyed by username machine composite key  That way you can have different settings for every machine  I ve not used the in-built Settings class much so I ll abstain from commenting

User · Answer

I wanted to use an xml control file based on a class for my VB net desktop WPF application  The above code to do this all in one is excellent and set me in the right direction  In case anyone is searching for a VB net solution here is the class I built   Imports System IO Imports System Xml Serialization  Public Class XControl  Private  person ID As Integer Private  person UID As Guid   load from file Public Function XCRead filename As String  As XControl     Using sr As StreamReader   New StreamReader filename          Dim xmls As New XmlSerializer GetType XControl           Return CType xmls Deserialize sr   XControl      End Using End Function   save to file Public Sub XCSave filename As String      Using sw As StreamWriter   New StreamWriter filename          Dim xmls As New XmlSerializer GetType XControl           xmls Serialize sw  Me      End Using End Sub   all the get set is below here  Public Property Person ID   As Integer     Get         Return  person ID     End Get     Set value As Integer           person ID   value     End Set End Property  Public Property Person UID As Guid     Get         Return  person UID     End Get     Set value As Guid           person UID   value     End Set End Property  End Class

[c#] c# - approach for saving user settings in a WPF application?

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