c#: Create new settings at run time

Question

c# windows forms: How do you create new settings at run time so that they are permanently saved as Settings.Default.-- values?

Answer 1

You can't add settings directly (at least not without editing the config XML at runtime), but you can fake it.

In my case, I had a group of identical custom controls on the form, and I wanted to store the runtime state of each control. I needed to store the state of each control, since each one had different data it.

I created a new StringCollection setting named ControlData and placed my own data in there. I then load the data from that list and use it to initialize my controls.

The list looks like this:

Box1Text=A
Box1List=abc;def;foo;bar;
Box2Text=hello
Box2List=server1;server2;

In my startup code, I read through the key/value pairs like this:

foreach (string item in Properties.Settings.Default.ControlData) {
  string[] parts=item.split('=');

parts[0] will have the key and parts[1] will have the value. You can now do stuff based on this data.

During the shutdown phase, I do the inverse to write the data back to the list. (Iterate through all the controls in the form and add their settings to ControlData.