Where are the application properties settings actually saved or written to?

Question

I am about pull all of my hair at once. Needless to say, I am frustrated. I am coding within Delphi Prism for .NET and currently working to get my application's user-defined properties saved into Application config file. I have setup everything as follows. It is working but some Values are not being saved or retrieved at all. So, I looked into the app.config file thinking they will all be there, but I didn't see any of the values saved in the file match the values that is being retrieved. It only has default values I put into Properties.Designer. Someone did say online that config file will only be updated when you run your application outside of Delphi Prism IDE. And I did, that still didn't work. I even rebooted my computer thinking that maybe Delphi Prism is flaky and it needed a quick break. Even that didn't work.

So, where are the values being saved - in app.config file or in memory?

(my code might be choppy. I am trying to get the basic setup for my app working before I polish the code.)

Here is the image of my Properties.Settings.Designer:

Here is the app.config file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
    <configSections>
        <sectionGroup name="userSettings" type="System.Configuration.UserSettingsGroup, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" >
            <section name="MillenniaMono.Properties.Settings" type="System.Configuration.ClientSettingsSection, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" allowExeDefinition="MachineToLocalUser" requirePermission="false" />
        </sectionGroup>
    </configSections>
    <userSettings>
        <MillenniaMono.Properties.Settings>
            <setting name="baseDir" serializeAs="String">
                <value>00:00:00</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="SoftKey" serializeAs="String">
                <value>$6e1eaffa</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="OnTop" serializeAs="String">
                <value>False</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="StartExpanded" serializeAs="String">
                <value>True</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="HideOnStart" serializeAs="String">
                <value>False</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="DXCommLocation" serializeAs="String">
                <value>50, 50</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="InputBoxLocation" serializeAs="String">
                <value>50, 50</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="MainFormLocation" serializeAs="String">
                <value>50, 50</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="OutputUnitLocation" serializeAs="String">
                <value>50, 50</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="SysErrorDlgLocation" serializeAs="String">
                <value>50, 50</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="UnitDuplicateLocation" serializeAs="String">
                <value>50, 50</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="UnitsLocation" serializeAs="String">
                <value>50, 50</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="UnitSelectLocation" serializeAs="String">
                <value>50, 50</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="CommStatusLocation" serializeAs="String">
                <value>50, 50</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="UnitsWinSize" serializeAs="String">
                <value>703, 300</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="DXComm_TypeDX" serializeAs="String">
                <value>0</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="DXComm_Comport" serializeAs="String">
                <value>0</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="DXComm_Baud" serializeAs="String">
                <value>1200</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="DXComm_Parity" serializeAs="String">
                <value>0</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="DXComm_RetryInt" serializeAs="String">
                <value>0</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="DXComm_TimeOutDelay" serializeAs="String">
                <value>0</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="DXComm_ScanTime" serializeAs="String">
                <value>0</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="DXComm_Offline_Pct" serializeAs="String">
                <value>0</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="DXComm_Online_Pct" serializeAs="String">
                <value>0</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="DXComm_ControlCycleCount" serializeAs="String">
                <value>0</value>
            </setting>
            <setting name="DXComm_LockTimeDelay" serializeAs="String">
                <value>0</value>
            </setting>
        </MillenniaMono.Properties.Settings>
    </userSettings>
</configuration>

Here is the code for writing into app.config:

  if ReadWrite then
  begin
      RetryIni := Int32(RetrySpin.value);
      OfflinePct := int32(OfflineSpin.value);
      ScanTime := int32(ScanSpin.value);
      OnlinePct := int32(OnlineSpin.value);
      timeoutDelay := int32(TimeoutSpin.Value);
      ControlCycleCount := int32(ControlSpin.value);
      LockTimeDelay := Int32(LockTime.value);

      with commsetting := Millenniamono.Properties.Settings.Default do
      begin
        commsetting.DXComm_TypeDX := TypeDXCard.SelectedIndex;
        commsetting.DXComm_Comport := Commport.SelectedIndex;
        commsetting.DXComm_Baud:=BaudRate.SelectedIndex;
        commsetting.DXComm_Parity := int32(EvenParity.Checked = true);
        commsetting.DXComm_RetryInt:=RetryIni;
        commsetting.DXComm_TimeOutDelay:=timeOutDelay;
        commsetting.DXComm_ScanTime:=ScanTime;
        commsetting.DXComm_Offline_Pct:=OfflinePct;
        commsetting.DXComm_Online_Pct:=onlinepct;
        commsetting.DXComm_ControlCycleCount:=ControlCycleCount;
        commsetting.DXComm_LockTimeDelay:=LockTimeDelay;
        commsetting.Save;
      end;
  end;

Here is the code reading:

TypeDXCard.SelectedIndex:= commsetting.DXComm_TypeDX;
Commport.SelectedIndex:=CommSetting.DXComm_Comport;

case commsetting.DXComm_Baud of
1200: BaudRate.SelectedIndex:=0;
2400: BaudRate.SelectedIndex:=1;
4800: Baudrate.SelectedIndex:=2;
9600: BaudRate.SelectedIndex:=3;
19200: BaudRate.SelectedIndex:=4;
38400: BaudRate.SelectedIndex:=5;
57600: BaudRate.SelectedIndex:=6;
115200: BaudRate.SelectedIndex:=7;
else BaudRate.SelectedIndex:=0;
end;

case commsetting.DXComm_Parity of 
0: begin EvenParity.Checked:=true; NoneParity.Checked:=false; end;
1: begin NoneParity.Checked:=true; EvenParity.Checked:=false; end;
else begin EvenParity.Checked:=true; NoneParity.Checked:=false; end;
end;

RetrySpin.Value:=Commsetting.DXComm_RetryInt;
RetryIni := RetrySpin.Value;

TimeOutSpin.Value:=CommSetting.DXComm_TimeOutDelay;
TimeOutDelay := TimeOutSpin.Value;

ScanSpin.Value:=CommSetting.DXComm_ScanTime;
ScanTime := ScanSpin.Value;

OfflineSpin.Value:=CommSetting.DXComm_Offline_Pct;
OfflinePct:=OfflineSpin.Value;

OnlineSpin.Value:=Commsetting.DXComm_Online_Pct;
OnlinePct:=OnlineSpin.Value;

Controlspin.Value:=Commsetting.DXComm_ControlCycleCount;
ControlCycleCount:=Controlspin.Value;

LockTime.Value:=Commsetting.DXComm_LockTimeDelay;
LockTimeDelay := LockTime.Value;
  end;

Here is the actual values being displayed or retrieved. I arbitrarily set some values to be saved and read back but it doesn't match what I am seeing in app.config file.

Answer 1

User settings are meant as settings that can be altered/saved on a per-user basis. Therefor they are not saved in your app.config but in a new file called user.config and that file is saved under de %APPDATA% directory. On a windows 7 machine it probably looks something like

c:\users\myusername\appdata\local\microsoft\myassemblyname\user.config (there might also be some guid somewhere I can't recall)

The user settings can also be found in the app.config but those values are used as the default values when a new user.config file is created for the first time.

EDIT: Extra info on locating the file. I did a quick test running in the vs debugger for an assembly called DEA.exe and the user.config ended up in:

C:\Users\\AppData\Local\\DEA.vshost.exe_Url_sloja2hil2eiypecefjbp1icc1fo50g4\\user.config

A bit more info can be found in this msdn document (last paragraph on the remarks specifically)

Answer 2

I don't know about Delphi, but at least c# generates a real code file from the settings designer, with content like this

[global::System.Configuration.UserScopedSettingAttribute()]
[global::System.Diagnostics.DebuggerNonUserCodeAttribute()]
[global::System.Configuration.DefaultSettingValueAttribute("foo")]
public string bar {
    get {
        return ((string)(this["bar"]));
    }
    set {
        this["bar"] = value;
    }
}

I assume Delphi will generate a similar file.
The default value is encoded as an attribute, if nothing is specified in app.config the default value is used. Nothing is written to app.config.
In the c# case the designer also tries to create corresponding default values in app.config, but if they are removed the default value from the DefaultSettingValueAttribute is used.

If you manually create a value in app.config, is that value used?