Best way to save per user options in C#

Question

What is an easy way to save/load settings? I\'d prefer it if each user has their own set of settings.

Answer 1

When you say, "each user has their own set of settings", are you talking about an app that is shared by colleagues via a network or an app on a shared computer?

Personally, I would go a the settings file route. You can use the registry, but that makes me leery. There have been places in Windows (assuming you're on Windows) to store User Data for forever and a day, all you need to do is write to them. And if you're on Vista, writing to the registry may not be an option, unless you want to UAC prompt your users.

If your app already uses a SQL back end of some kind, use that. Make a settings table, or a key/value bag and store it there. Serialize that into an object and vice verse and you should have a version 1 of a settings manager.

Check out the ConfigurationManager and SpecialFolders, that should get you started.