How to persist the user information in drop down in a windows form app for different user login using c#

Question

I am currently looking at a better approach to remember/persist previous state of the controls on a .NET Windows Form using c# For example, there are 8 drop down list menu controls on a windows form. And user previously selected some items in these drop down menu. What I'd like to do here is: when this WinForm is loaded again, user's previous selections shall be recovered and remain the same. for this i have tried using saving user settings method in settings,settings config file but now i want to do the same for the different user login to the application in the same system. can anyone suggest me the method to do that ? Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Hi @Dineshkumar.S ,Welcome to Microsoft Q&A.

There are several methods to choose from. You can continue to choose built-in, or you can choose to use a database, or you can use the registry.

Since you used the built-in before, I also show you the usage of the built-in:

You can create different config files for different users.

When a user logs in, just call different config files according to the user.

Just for reference:

You also need to consider encryption, and create config for each user, you can put the config address in the property, etc.

using System.Configuration;

namespace WinFormsApp1
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        string aConfigPath = @"C:\Users\Administrator\source\repos\WindowsFormsApp8\WinFormsApp1\Config\a.config";
        string bConfigPath = @"C:\Users\Administrator\source\repos\WindowsFormsApp8\WinFormsApp1\Config\b.config";

        private void UpdateComboBoxSelection(string configPath, string key, ComboBox comboBox)
        {
            ExeConfigurationFileMap configMap = new ExeConfigurationFileMap { ExeConfigFilename = configPath };
            Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration(configMap, ConfigurationUserLevel.None);
            comboBox.SelectedIndex = Convert.ToInt32(config.AppSettings.Settings[key].Value);
        }

        private void SubmitComboBoxSelection(string configPath, string key, ComboBox comboBox)
        {
            ExeConfigurationFileMap configMap = new ExeConfigurationFileMap { ExeConfigFilename = configPath };
            Configuration config = ConfigurationManager.OpenMappedExeConfiguration(configMap, ConfigurationUserLevel.None);
            config.AppSettings.Settings[key].Value = comboBox.SelectedIndex.ToString();
            config.Save();
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            string textBoxValue = textBox1.Text.Trim();
            if (textBoxValue == "a")
            {
                UpdateComboBoxSelection(aConfigPath, "C1SelectedItem", comboBox1);
                UpdateComboBoxSelection(aConfigPath, "C2SelectedItem", comboBox2);
            }
            else if (textBoxValue == "b")
            {
                UpdateComboBoxSelection(bConfigPath, "C1SelectedItem", comboBox1);
                UpdateComboBoxSelection(bConfigPath, "C2SelectedItem", comboBox2);
            }
        }

        private void button2_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            string textBoxValue = textBox1.Text.Trim();
            if (textBoxValue == "a")
            {
                SubmitComboBoxSelection(aConfigPath, "C1SelectedItem", comboBox1);
                SubmitComboBoxSelection(aConfigPath, "C2SelectedItem", comboBox2);
            }
            else if (textBoxValue == "b")
            {
                SubmitComboBoxSelection(bConfigPath, "C1SelectedItem", comboBox1);
                SubmitComboBoxSelection(bConfigPath, "C2SelectedItem", comboBox2);
            }
        }
    }
}

Best Regards,

Jiale

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