Question

I am writing a program that need to store some configuration information. I thought XML would be a good choice, but I do not want to learn XML in C# from scratch.

Could you recommend good ways/classes handling this task?

Answer 1

Just use the built-in .NET configuration system! What’s wrong with that??

For that, add a reference to System.Configuration to your project, and have a good look at the ConfigurationManager class in that namespace.

• MSDN docs on the System.Configuration namespace
• MSDN docs on the ConfigurationManager class
• Using Application Configuration Files in .NET
• Specifying Configuration Settings in Web.config

Starting with Visual Studio 2005, you can also define application- or user-scoped settings in a visual designer inside VS – check out Application Settings Overview on MSDN for this (those work for Winforms and console apps). Those settings are stored in your app.config/web.config for the application-scoped settings, and in a separate user.config file in a directory accessible to the user account for the user-scoped settings. Those can be manipulated and updated at runtime using standard .NET classes (from the System.Configuration namespace).