Question

What approach do you recommend for persisting user settings in a WPF windows (desktop) application? Note that the idea is that the user can change their settings at run time, and then can close down the application, then when starting up the application later the application will use the current settings. Effectively then it will appear as if the application settings do not change.

Q1 – Database or other approach? I do have a sqlite database that I will be using anyway hence using a table in the database would be as good as any approach?

Q2 – If Database: What database table design? One table with columns for different data types that one might have (e.g. string, long, DateTime etc) OR just a table with a string for the value upon which you have to serialize and de-serialize the values? I’m thinking the first would be easier, and if there aren’t many settings the overhead isn’t much?

Q3 – Could Application Settings be used for this? If so are there any special tasks required to enable the persistence here? Also what would happen regarding usage of the “default” value in the Application Settings designer in this case? Would the default override any settings that were saved between running the application? (or would you need to NOT use the default value)

Answer 1

You can use application settings for this, using a database is not the best option considering the time consumed to read and write the settings (especially if you use web services).

Here are few links which explain how to achieve this and use settings in WPF:

• User Settings in WPF
• Quick WPF Tip: How to bind to WPF application resources and settings?
• A Configurable Window for WPF