I was wondering what would be the correct method for saving all user data for an application I am working on. The application is in QT. The user inputs a lot of data into the application and the data will be different for every user. I want the ability for the user to save all the current data to a file that can be user by the loaded by the application again once the user wants to use it again or use it on another computer running the application.
What would be the correct and best way to do this? Do I need to use xml format? And then use the xmlreader for QT? Or do I just need to create my own file format and just use the stream to just read everything in. The data in the file will need to be labeled, because it will need to put the data in certain spots on the gui. And the user has the option to dynamically create boxes and tabs that hold certain information.
If you need any more information, please let me know.
A short example:
I am not only reading gui locations.
But the contents of those. For
instance. The user is able to create
tabs that contain edit text boxes. And
those tabs are associated with items
that are in a list. When the user
clicks on an item in the list the user
will be presented with a whole set of
new tabs. And each tab has some
editing forms. The file will need to
contain what is in the list, what tabs
the user has created under each item
in that list and the contents of each
tab associated with the tab of each
item in the list.
In essense, yes you’ll be creating your own file format, but the actual content can just be XML in whatever scheme you need. Then you can use Qt’s built-in XML processing capabilities to pull the heavy lifting of parsing the text (I personally prefer the DOM model, so I use QDomDocument as my base point), and you’ll just need to worry about parsing things to and from the individual nodes.
The Qt framework has some great XML samples if I remember correctly that helped me get off the ground almost immediately. Hope they help!