Question

I’m going to do a project task as the last part of a programming course in C#, and I have choosen to do a media library for storing information of DVD movie collections. The thing I need some advice is about how to save this information since the task should be solved by using simple text files and not databases which had been better.

So, which is the best way to save this information to be able to add, edit and allow search for titles and actors and also sort after genre to mention some of the idéas I have for this program.

Should I just save the information by just add the title, year, playtime, director, actor1, actor2, actor3, genre, grade, comment for each movie lika a row at the end of the file? Can I search in the file or should I, in some way, first read it all into an array, and then do the serach and perhaps edit and save the complete file again?

Or is it better to use XML like this:

<movie_collections>
<movie>
<title=Tron Legacy"></title>
<year=2010></year>
<playtime=120></playtime>
etc.
</movie>
</movie_collections>

If I use XML, can I search for a title and just load or edit that part? Are there better alternatives than these?

Answer 1

You may store the data in XML file. An XML file can store data similar to a database table. You can add multiple records, hierarchical data etc… You may easily query the data using LINQ to XML.

If you dont want to use LINQ to XML, You can use so typical XMLDocument to handle the XML data.