save items in a listbox

Question

In my C# windows application (using visual C# 2012 if you need to know) I need to add things to listboxes and save the items so when the program closes they stay there next time it opens. I would prefer not using the settings to store the information.

Some more things I need for this. Saving them to a text file can't happen either. It needs to be saved in a way that it can not be edited outside of the program.

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

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Sorry but its not possible. Anything that you save can be modified by another program.

You could sign the saved data and then detect that some other has modified the data, but you cannot prevent other programs from read/changing the data.

EDIT

DPAPI can be used to encrypt/decrypt the data. See Really simple encryption with C# and SymmetricAlgorithm

edited May 23 '17 at 10:34

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answered Jan 19 '13 at 02:23

Richard Schneider

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I mean it cant be edited easily like opening a text file and changing 25 to 10000000 just like that. – Michael Guercia Jan 19 '13 at 02:28
Then encrypt the data before saving it. – Richard Schneider Jan 19 '13 at 02:30
I'm not sure how to do that – Michael Guercia Jan 19 '13 at 02:30
Use DPAPI (its easy). See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9031537/really-simple-encryption-with-c-sharp-and-symmetricalgorithm – Richard Schneider Jan 19 '13 at 02:32

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 19 '13 at 02:50

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Set up SQL on a web server.

Save the info to your web server.

They can't modify data on a remote server, so I think a database is the way to go.

answered Jan 19 '13 at 02:50

prospector

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 19 '13 at 04:41

If you are the only person using that program... I mean... if you are the only one that knows what the program is doing, you could go for saving data in binary format into binary files. I doubt that someone looking at your files will say "Oh damn there is a .bin file in this directory! I have to find a way to discover how to read it and what's it's content!".

As long as you keep your program and its sources protected... I doubt someone will get something out of that content. You transform all your data into a Byte[], you compress it, you encrypt it and you write in a file. Bye bye.

save items in a listbox

3 Answers3