Hi Al, If you are storing user settings information I recommend you the following:
- Use a database engine which can be embedded in delphi (not a client server database). SQLite, NexusDB, FireBird are some of them. - Create a table with the following structure: USER_ID INTEGER or whatever datatype you define your user ids, SETTING_ID INTEGER, DATA BLOB - USER_ID and SETTING_ID should be together your primary key and be indexed to find your records faster. - Define constants in your programm for the settings you need. - Programm a singleton class which should be instantiated on application start and destroyed on application end. To use the right file store the path to the database in the registry or just use the same path where your application runs. Open the embedded database on create an close it on destroy. The class should have thread safe public class functions to read/write settings like function ReadSetting(const UserId,SettingId: Integer):string; or procedure ReadSetting(const UserId,SettingId: Integer; const aStream:TStream); procedure WriteSetting(const UserId,SettingId: Integer; aString:string); or procedure WriteSetting(const UserId,SettingId: Integer; const aStream:TStream); - Many of the vcl components have functions to save the state to a stream so that it is easy to read/write them with the appropriate functions (ReadToStream, WriteToStream). - In other cases you surely would like just to save settings as string, the corresponding functions should create a BlobField and put the string in the Blob or just use the property AsString from TField. - You can expand the class with functions which return other datatypes like integer,double,datetime, etc. This solution lets you also use XML where needed, you can always save XML settings as string. Furthermore if you need to persist the settings to a Server you can programm a function in your application server to save the whole Database file and make it available for other users (FireBird and SQLite use only one file for the database). I prefer to work with such a database instead of with the registry beacause it is easier to maintain, to transfer to other operating systems and to distribute with an installation programm; you can query it easily with sql statements and expand its functionality as needed. I hope it helps you a little bit more Agustin Angeles _______________________________________________ Delphi mailing list -> [email protected] http://www.elists.org/mailman/listinfo/delphi
