I have a Winform program I wrote for a university so they could run test files. The program is targeted at .NET 4.5 and was developed and run on Windows 7.
To make the running of files easy for the technicians I added the ability to save the paths to the test files. The file path is stored in a settings file (ProgSettings.settings) under the variable "RunNames".
When the save button is pressed I run a validation to ensure the test file at the end of the path exists and is valid before adding it to the RunNames list:
/*
*Function: SaveButton_Click(sender, e)
*Notes: responds to the button click "Save"
* tries to save file (if valid) to settings
*/
private void SaveButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
if (ValidateFile(TrackFileName.Text))
{
string displayName = updateLinkNames(TrackFileName.Text).ToUpper();
if (!ListOfTracks.Items.Contains(displayName))
{
ListOfTracks.Items.Add(displayName);
runNames.Add(TrackFileName.Text);
}
updateSettings();
}
}
/*
*Function: ValidateFile(fileName)
*Notes: called from save button click
* checks validity of the file path
*/
private bool ValidateFile(string fileName)
{
fileName = fileName.ToUpper();
FileToRun.FileName = fileName;
validFile = System.IO.File.Exists(fileName);
if(fileName != null && fileName != "" && fileName.EndsWith(".TXT") && validFile)
{
return true;
}
else
{
return false;
}
}
/*
*Function: updateSettings()
*Notes: updates the settings with the valid path
*/
private void updateSettings()
{
string value = String.Join(",", runNames.Select(i => i.ToString()).ToArray());
ProgSettings.Default.RunNames = value;
ProgSettings.Default.Save();
}
(For those of you unfamiliar with .settings they store the basic types available on C#, there are ways to include arrays as well but the simplest solution is to concatenate the different parts of the array in a string with a separator - in my case ",").
Then when I load the program again I populate a list of checkboxes using the a getSavedFiles() function below.
private List<string> getSavedFiles()
{
string localRunNames = ProgSettings.Default.RunNames.ToUpper();
string[] arr = localRunNames.Split(',').Select(s => Convert.ToString(s)).ToArray();
return arr.Cast<String>().ToList();
}
The settings works correctly on both my work computer and my personal laptop I did testing on. However, now the program is in use at the university they are saying that after shutting down the computer the next time the run the program all the saved file paths are gone.
Is this due to how to how the university managers users accounts on the computer? Or is there some other reason for this?
Was there another alternative to storing setting information for cases where .settings files don't work? (The only other solution I can think of is having the program write a config.txt file which I would prefer not to do encase the application is used somewhere it won't having writing permissions)
Below is a link to a question about the best practice to save application settings:
