Programming C#

Isolated Storage

The .NET CLR provides isolated storage to allow the application developer to store data on a per-user basis. Isolated storage provides much of the functionality of traditional Windows .ini files or the more recent HKEY_CURRENT_USER key in the Windows Registry.

Applications save data to a unique data compartment associated with the application. The CLR implements the data compartment with a data store: typically a directory on the file system.

Administrators are free to limit how much isolated storage individual applications can use. They can also use security so that less trusted code cannot call more highly trusted code to write to isolated storage.

What is important about isolated storage is that the CLR provides a standard place to store your application’s data, but it does not impose (or support) any particular layout or syntax for that data. In short, you can store anything you like in isolated storage.

Typically, you will store text, often in the form of name-value pairs. Isolated storage is a good mechanism for saving user configuration information such as login name, the position of various windows and widgets, and other application-specific, user-specific information. The data is stored in a separate file for each user, but the files can be isolated even further by distinguishing among different aspects of the identity of the code (by assembly or by originating application domain).

Using isolated storage is fairly straightforward. To write to isolated ...