7

I have not seeing an satisfactory answer for this yet, so thought I'd ask. Are there any best practices for storing UI settings in a file?

The scenario is that we have an in house C# app that I want to store an array of file/folders in along with other random things (flags to use when executing an external command, optional arguments to pass to selectable compare algorithms, etc). Because of the nature of these values, using the built in app.config methods isn't going to work. So is there any best practices when storing semi-complex settings to an setting file?

Currently the most complex I'm storing will be a list with a single entry needing to store a file name, compare algorithm, and argument text. So it's not all simple key/value data.

I'm looking for thoughts on:

  • layout (ex. if XML, values should be in the attributes vs node.value)
  • format (XML, YAML, etc)
  • frameworks

This won't be storing sensitive data, so security isn't a concern.

I'm currently looking to just use XmlDocument and separate classes for each different collection. But I feel like there should be some existing framework for this already.

Thank you!

smci
  • 32,567
  • 20
  • 113
  • 146
Jason S.
  • 83
  • 1
  • 5
  • I feel this isn't a duplicate as the answers to that question all describe how one would store WPF settings and/or the location of that file. I'm looking to store structured settings and best practices for that. – Jason S. Aug 23 '13 at 13:46
  • "Best practices" is a synonym for "What's your opinion on this?" Which is squarely off topic (because opinionated answers draw trouble). – George Stocker Aug 23 '13 at 16:07

2 Answers2

10

You're right that such settings should not be stored in app.config file. It just adds clutter there. In this case it would be better to create another configuration file as you have already mentioned in your ticket.

You are planning to structure this config file as XML document. This is a great idea. This also means that your config data is structured. That's great too.

I would suggest you go for JSON. This would let you load config settings into your application at run-time with very few lines of code. Try NewtonSoft.JSON (aka. JSON.Net).

You may follow these steps to quickly add and use configuration settings:

  1. Install NewtonSoft.JSON using Nuget package manager
  2. Add reference to this library to your project and .cs file (using NewtonSoft.Json)
  3. Create a C# class for your config settings. For repeating blocks you may use List<string> or any other relevant data type, even int - so you don't have to do any type conversion too.
  4. Read JSON file into a string object
  5. Use JsonConvert.DeserializeObject() as:

MyConfigSettings settings = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<MyConfigSettings>(jsonString);

Here MyConfigSettings is the configuration settings class. The corresponding members will have to be declared as public properties with proper get; set; attributes defined.

This would load all the configuration settings to the settings object. The best part is that any missing configuration values, will be automatically skipped so you don't have to have any complex parsing algorithms.

To write config values to a JSON file, you may populate values in the settings object and serialize them using:

// Indented so that it looks readable when the config file is opened in editor like Notepad
string data = JsonConvert.SerializeObject<MyConfigSettings>(settings, Formatting.Indented);
// Now just store string object data to the config file

Note: This would require .Net 4.0+

A quick start is given in this example.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Vivek Jain
  • 3,811
  • 6
  • 30
  • 47
  • Having an out-of-the-box solution for this using configuration section, I think this is far from best practice. – Ivo Aug 23 '13 at 16:04
  • I like this solution, but as ivowiblo mentioned, having something out of box is more ideal. I feel if I weren't programming in C# then I would probably implement this. – Jason S. Aug 23 '13 at 17:25
2

You can also define a custom configuration section and then put the settings in a separate config file if you didn't want to clutter up your app.config. A custom configuration module allows you to define a structure for your own complex settings and store them in a standard config file. If you have used Entity Framework, Enterprise Library or the like, then you have probably seen them defined at the top of the file. A quick search on Google turned up another StackOverflow post on the subject.

How to create custom config section in app.config

Community
  • 1
  • 1
Jason
  • 651
  • 5
  • 10