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I am about to start development of application in C# and .NET. The application is going to be big in terms of how user will configure it to display on the screen.

I need some way to store configuration data and I have only explored 2 options yet and it is XML files and INI files , which one of these is better? Is there any other new way to store data that works great with .NET Framework?

Brian Tompsett - 汤莱恩
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zbora23
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    See [What is App.config in c#.net?How to use it?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13043530/what-is-app-config-in-c-nethow-to-use-it) – p.s.w.g Feb 26 '14 at 22:47
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    INI files are a concept from Windows 3.1, Please don't use it. – Federico Berasategui Feb 26 '14 at 22:48
  • How sensitive is the data – Xela Feb 26 '14 at 22:49
  • What kind of application is it? Desktop application? Windows Forms? Windows 8 App? WPF App? Web Application? Who are the "users"? – Erik Funkenbusch Feb 26 '14 at 22:50
  • Is this configuration going to be on a per-user basis, and will the user be configuring it him/herself? – Adam Miller Feb 26 '14 at 22:52
  • App.config, xml serialization, binary serialization, registry, remote database, local light database. (as HighCore said, stay away from ini unless backward compatibility is an issue). There are many options - it really depends on requirements surrounding the configuration (is it something that user changes or admin configures ones and sets, does it need to be shared with other components, does it need to be made available to remote machines, etc.) – LB2 Feb 26 '14 at 22:53

1 Answers1

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This is a really broad question, but basically the way I see it there are a few prime places to store application data. Exactly what and how you store is going to depend on the type of data. The following is my personal short list:

  • Registry - The windows registry can be used to store single key/value pairs or small amounts of read only data. You really can only write these settings when your application is installed unless you are running in administrator mode (which isn't a good idea).
  • App Config - Similar to the registry this allows storage of application data that is generally best written during installation or during configuration but not much after that. The nice thing about this is the system administrator can often find these files and they are xml which means they are easier to edit (and read) than other files.
  • Isolated Storage - If you are storing application, user or machine specific information and you don't mind writing your own file readers and writers (or you are interested in delving into xml storage) this is an excellent option for you. It allows user specific settings and it doesn't require the user to have special privileges on the computer.
  • Local Database - If you want values that you can look up easily, read and write often and are stored simply a local database can be excellent. You might consider looking into SQLLite or a similar tool for this.
  • Network Database - This is pretty much as advanced as it gets. If you want user information to be automatically processed regardless of where the user opens your application and you want to be able to share settings between computers this is probably your best option. You can use MySQL for free or SQLExpress if you aren't storing GB of settings. It does require a significant amount of setup but it might be the best option anyways if you require this level of capabilities.

Hopefully this gets you started. Best of luck!

drew_w
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