Can you have a generic List(of T) in your settings file???

Question

Hi, In my settings file, I would like to have one setting that is of the type List(of Myclass).... I can't find anything on the net that does this. Is it possible?

Answer 1

Yes it is possible, just type List<SomeType> into the type field manually, it should work.

Answer 2

You could serialize your List<T> to a string, and put that in your settings file.

Would that work?

Answer 3

I assume you're talking about user settings...

I don't know if you can specify a generic type, although if you create your own non-generic type which inherits from List(of MyClass), then you can specify this type as your user setting without any problem.

Something like:

Public Class MyClassList 
    Inherits List(Of MyClass)

End Class

Then you should be able to browse for MyClassList .

Answer 4

I agree that Meta-Knight's inheritance solution is best, however it is possible to do this by manually editing the setting XML file. In Solution Explorer go to: Solution > Project > Properties > Settings.settings. Right-click on Settings.settings and choose "Open With". Select "XML (Text) Editor". Then insert the following inside <Settings>:

<Setting Name="TestGenericList" Type="System.Collections.Generic.List&lt;int&gt;" Scope="User">
  <Value Profile="(Default)" />
</Setting>

save, and it works.

Unfortunately it doesn't appear to work with generic types requiring two or more types, since the comma is not allowed in that attribute. Even entity-encoding it (,) didn't help.

The following causes an error "Illegal characters in path" when you go to edit the settings file in the settings designer:

<Setting Name="TestGenericDictionary" Type="System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary&lt;string&#x002C;string&gt;" Scope="User">
  <Value Profile="(Default)" />
</Setting>