In this tutorial, we are going to configure the application/user settings in a WPF application the easy way. Most example that I’ve seen on the net involve the ConfigurationManager class
and involve creating your own XML file from scratch. I am going to show you a easier way to do it. (in my humble opinion)
First, the definitions:
User Setting – is designed to be something specific to the user. For example, one user may have a requirement to see certain stocks, news articles or local weather. This can be set at run-time.
Application Setting – is designed to store information such as a database connection string. These settings are read-only at run-time.
1) Lets create a new WPF Project
and play with a few settings. Once you are inside VS, then
paste the following code snippet inside the <Grid> tags.
<Grid>
<TextBox Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="12,11,0,0" Name="textBox1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="285" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" />
<Button Content="Set Title" Name="button2" Click="button2_Click" Margin="108,40,96,114" />
<TextBlock Height="23" Name="textBlock1" Text="TextBlock" VerticalAlignment="Bottom" Width="377" />
</Grid>
Basically, its just a Textbox, Button
and TextBlock. The main Window should look like the following:
2) Now we are going to setup our Configuration Settings. Look in the Solution Explorer
and double click on the Settings.settings file. Make sure that your settings file looks just like mine included below:
What just happened was the designer created an XML file
and created the Settings.Designer.cs file which looks like this:
//------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// <auto-generated>
// This code was generated by a tool.
// Runtime Version:4.0.30319.1
//
// Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior
and will be lost if
// the code is regenerated.
// </auto-generated>
//------------------------------------------------------------------------------
namespace WPFExam.Properties {
[global::System.Runtime.CompilerServices.CompilerGeneratedAttribute()]
[global::System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("Microsoft.VisualStudio.Editors.SettingsDesigner.SettingsSingleFileGenerator", "10.0.0.0")]
internal sealed partial class Settings : global::System.Configuration.ApplicationSettingsBase {
private static Settings defaultInstance = ((Settings)(global::System.Configuration.ApplicationSettingsBase.Synchronized(new Settings())));
public static Settings Default {
get {
return defaultInstance;
}
}
[global::System.Configuration.UserScopedSettingAttribute()]
[global::System.Diagnostics.DebuggerNonUserCodeAttribute()]
[global::System.Configuration.DefaultSettingValueAttribute("ApplicationName")]
public string ApplicationName {
get {
return ((string)(this["ApplicationName"]));
}
set {
this["ApplicationName"] = value;
}
}
[global::System.Configuration.ApplicationScopedSettingAttribute()]
[global::System.Diagnostics.DebuggerNonUserCodeAttribute()]
[global::System.Configuration.DefaultSettingValueAttribute("SQL_SRV342")]
public string DatabaseServerName {
get {
return ((string)(this["DatabaseServerName"]));
}
}
}
}
The XML File is named app.config
and looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<configSections>
<sectionGroup name="userSettings" type="System.Configuration.UserSettingsGroup, System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" >
<section name="WPFExam.Properties.Settings" type="System.Configuration.ClientSettingsSection, System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" allowExeDefinition="MachineToLocalUser" requirePermission="false" />
</sectionGroup>
<sectionGroup name="applicationSettings" type="System.Configuration.ApplicationSettingsGroup, System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" >
<section name="WPFExam.Properties.Settings" type="System.Configuration.ClientSettingsSection, System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" requirePermission="false" />
</sectionGroup>
</configSections>
<userSettings>
<WPFExam.Properties.Settings>
<setting name="ApplicationName" serializeAs="String">
<value>ApplicationName</value>
</setting>
</WPFExam.Properties.Settings>
</userSettings>
<applicationSettings>
<WPFExam.Properties.Settings>
<setting name="DatabaseServerName" serializeAs="String">
<value>SQL_SRV342</value>
</setting>
</WPFExam.Properties.Settings>
</applicationSettings>
</configuration>
3) The only left now is the code behind the button. Double click the button
and replace the MainWindow() method with the following code snippet.
public MainWindow()
{
InitializeComponent();
this.Title = Properties.Settings.Default.ApplicationName;
textBox1.Text = Properties.Settings.Default.ApplicationName;
textBlock1.Text = Properties.Settings.Default.DatabaseServerName;
}
private void button2_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
Properties.Settings.Default.ApplicationName = textBox1.Text.ToString();
Properties.Settings.Default.Save();
}
Run the application
and type something in the textbox
and hit the Set Title button. Now, restart the application
and you should see the text that you entered earlier.
If you look at the button2 click event, you will see that it was actually 2 lines of codes to save to the configuration file. I hope this helps, for more information consult MSDN.
