My application has historically used an ini file on the same file server as the data it consumes is located to store per user settings so that they roam if the user logs on from multiple computers. To do this we had a file that looked like:
[domain\username1]
value1=foo
value2=bar
[domain\username2]
value1=foo
value2=baz
For this release we’re trying to migrate away from using ini files due to limitations in the win32 ini read/write functions without having to write a custom ini file parser.
I’ve looked at app.config and user settings files and neither appear to be suitable. The former needs to be in the same folder as the executable, and the latter doesn’t provide any means to create new values at runtime.
Is there a built in option I’m missing, or is my best path to write a preferences class of my own and use the framework’s XML serialization to write it out?
I have found that the fastest way here is to just create an XML file that does what you want, then use XSD.exe to create a class and serialize the data. It is fast, and a few lines of code and works quite well.