A way to save a specific My.Settings Variable in VB.NET

Question

in My.Settings i've alot of variables including a 36000 records Datatable and Couple Large Array Lists, now when i call My.Settings.Save() it saves all the variables which takes alot of time and it saves variables that haven't been changed, is there a way make it Save only a Specific Datatable or ArrayList?

My.Setting.Save() 
'but what i want for example is something like
My.Settings.SomeDatatable.Save()

All of that data is being saved to a single config file, so of course its going to take a while to perform that IO operation. — NoAlias, Aug 26 '12 at 11:36

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 27 '12 at 09:38

These settings are stored in an XML file. Since XML files do not store data in a fixed-width record format, there is no way to update a single node in an XML file without rewriting the whole thing. If it is too slow, I would recommend either:

Store these settings in multiple XML files, so that you only have to save the applicable file, but not the rest
Store the settings in the database where each row can be saved individually without rewriting the whole file

Databases store their data in fixed-width "pages" so that only the modified pages need to be rewritten, rather than the whole file.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:20

What about saving your dataTable not within your Settings. You could make use of DataTable.WriteXml(). this would keep your settings much smaller and you can access them separately!

' save table
DataTable.WriteXml("yourFile.xml")

' load table
Dim newTable As New DataTable
newTable.ReadXml(fileName)

But if there is no other possibility this solution from SLaks will work too

' save table
Dim writer As New StringWriter()
table.WriteXml(writer)
My.MySettings.Default.TableXml = writer.ToString()

' load table
Dim reader As New StringReader(My.MySettings.Default.TableXml)
table.ReadXml(reader)

A way to save a specific My.Settings Variable in VB.NET

2 Answers2