Question

I’m creating an application that will search the documentation of a function within a language and return the results. Currently, the documentation consists of a single page which links to pages dedicated to the selected function. I have prepared a way for retrieving the data using HTML Agility Pack. I also have an algorithm to search through the keywords. I just need a way to store the data. Ease of use is more important to me than efficiency, in this case, because the application only needs to store about 75 records.

This is a list of potential solutions I have come up with:

1. System.Data.SQLite
2. CSV
3. XML

I think these are the solutions which most people would suggest immediately. So far, I have tried Solution 1 and it seems to be more work than necessary for a relatively small number of records.

For this project, what storage method would you suggest?

Answer 1

If the dataset is relatively small and speed is not a concern, I would go with XML. If you design your class right and it is serializable, you can just use the build in Xml serialization.

[Serializable]
public class MyDataStorage
{
    // some members

    public void Store( String filename )
    {
        XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer( typeof( MyDataStorage ) );
        using ( FileStream stream = File.OpenWrite( filename ) )
        {
            serializer.Serialize( stream, this );
        }
    }

    public static MyDataStorage Load(String filename )
    {
        XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer( typeof( MyDataStorage ) );
        object deserialized;
        using ( FileStream stream = File.OpenRead( filename ) )
        {
            deserialized = serializer.Deserialize( stream );
        }

        return (MyDataStorage) deserialized;
    }
}