Question

I have a small java utility application which performs tasks on remote computers. This app will provide user with a dropdown/combobox where they can enter ip address or hostnames for the computers they wish to connect to. It would be nice if the users could have a history of items/hosts they had connected in the dropdown.

I thought that I can create a file inside the distributable jar and use it to maintain the history. But writing to a file inside the jar seems to be impossible? The alternate approaches would be to use text files, databases etc located outside the jar. But this is not quite I would like to do as my utility app is only one file and I would like it to be completely independent of any external files. Also its not nice to have a text file stick around your jar file or create a text file each time your app is run.

Considering this case what options can I use? Are there any apis that can help in storing or keeping history?

Answer 1

Why don’t you store this info with an hidden file in the user home directory? Many application do the same thing.

You can get the user home directory in this way

String userhome = System.getProperty("user.home");