Question

I want to create a WinForms application.
This application will have many configurable options that will be saved in a database, so they can be persisted across executions (e.g. print settings, design options, etc.).

What approach would you recommend for loading these options, to avoid frequent access to the database?

Thanks!

Answer 1

If it security isn’t important, you could also have the settings saved in an xml file that your form reads in. You could have a class that loads the properties that you need.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.serialization.xmlserializer.aspx

[Serializable()]
public class Defaults
{
    public string Description { get; set; }
    public double Tolerance { get; set; }
    public string Units { get; set; }
 }

internal class FormDefaults
{
public void LoadSettings()
    {
      string kfileString = @"C:\Default_Settings.xml";

      var q = from el in XElement.Load(kfileString).Elements()
                select new FormDefault()
                {
                    Description = el.Element("InstrumentDescription").Value,
                    Tolerance = Double.Parse(el.Element("InstrumentMassTolerance").Value),
                    Units = el.Element("InstrumentMassUnits").Value,

                };
        }
    }
}

That’s pretty rough but I had something similar that worked pretty well and was pretty easy to set up.

Cheers