Visual Basic - How do I store strings permanently? After the app is closed?

Question

Hi, I'm trying to figure out how to do this as I'm not sure what's the proper way of doing this.

I've got several strings that I want to store/save permanently, even after the application is closed. How should I proceed? Do I read or write from a textfile?

Answer 1

Yes, you might store it in a simple text file or use a settings file.

Answer 2

Yes, I'd store it in some form of text file, then you can read it on load. It's very easy to implement in Visual Basic and you might even find some samples in Codemonkeys or similar. I'd avoid using the registry. Of course if you want, you could also use some sort of database (Access, SQLITE, etc.) to store the values. But that depends upon the type of data and how much do you need to read/write from it.

Answer 3

Take a look at Application Settings: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0zszyc6e.aspx

Answer 4

I believe you're looking for a feature known as Application Settings. This feature will take care of storing settings between instances of the application. The manner in which it stores settings is ClickOnce and User aware so it takes much of the problems out of the picture.

Here's a link to an overview on the topic

• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/c9db58th(VS.80).aspx

Answer 5

Use My.Settings

Answer 6

yes you can write to a text file, or try SQLite, which can let your VB program have database capabilities.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=visual+basic+sqlite&btnG=Search

Answer 7

I store what I need in a plain text file. I use my own format: First line: lenght of the array or the number of bytes/lines the data needs to be stored. Second line: data types. third line: directories or path info. At the end I store the data.

That's because programming languages can read by characters or by lines. C++ considers either whitespaces and lines.

SQL or Access is when you need to store more complex data than just strings or arrays.