Question

My Scenario

I have a class library that is going to be called from multiple separate executable applications. This class library needs to know about an address of a database server (and many other configuration options, auth info, etc) to access. I have a configuration and administration application, separate from the class library, that also needs to know and set these configuration options.

My Question

Is it be common practice to store these user specific configuration options in the Windows registry, or is it preferred to use the typical ‘App.config’ XML approach for the class library and allow the configuration tool to change and modify it?

I am leaning toward the registry approach, but I know many people have opinions about not using it. What would you do?

Answer 1

In my specific case, these specific config settings made more sense to be stored in the registry. I can’t be positive that our users will install the applications to the same locations, and at the very least, I’d have to store the location of the “master” config XML file in the registry so the other applications could locate it.

I simply whipped up a class with an index to read/write configuration settings to the registry like a Hashtable (string ponySetting = myRegistryObject["DefaultPonySetting"]) and called it a day. I reference the main assembly with this class in all the other applications anyways. Huzzah