I’m always looking for a way not only to make coding easier but also more useful and understandable.  And it doesn’t hurt if helps the documenting process as well.

With that in mind I came up with this method of saving settings that helps keep all your application settings nicely in one location, helps prevent misspelling a setting and keeps those settings in one class or module.

First, let me explain the problems I used to run into with this set of functions:

SaveSetting("Think Hard for a good name", "Main Application", _
       "Some Setting", SomeVariable)

And then someplace else in the application you try to read the settings in a you forget half of what you used for the setting name and section and you end up with soemthing like this:

GetSetting("A Good Name is hard to think of", "App Main", _
       "Something", SomeVariable)

Which will end up with garbage.

So I’m thinking… how to standardize the saving and getting of settings…mmm…

An ENUM!!!

So Here’s what I have so far, but I think it could be expanded upon…

Public Enum SettingTypes As Integer

InputDir 'These are just examples
ExportDir 'But very easy to comment
MainTimerInterval 'So you always know
MainWindowXLocation 'What each entry is
MainWindowYLocation 'Comment the hell
MainWindowWidth ' out of each one
MainWindowHeight ' get my drift?

End Enum

Module MainModule

#Region "Methods"

Public Function ReadThisSetting(ByVal SettingName As SettingTypes) As String

Dim tmpRead As String = ""

Try

tmpRead = GetSetting(My.Application.Info.Title, "Settings", SettingName.ToString)
Return tmpRead

Catch ex As Exception

MessageBox.Show("Error Reading Settings" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & ex.Message, "Error", _
   MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error)
Return ""

End Try

End Function

Public Function SaveThisSetting(ByVal SettingName As SettingTypes, ByVal SettingValue As _
   String) As Boolean

Try

SaveSetting(My.Application.Info.Title, "Settings", SettingName.ToString, SettingValue)
Return True

Catch ex As Exception

MessageBox.Show("Error Saving Settings" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & ex.Message, "Error", _
   MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error)
Return False

End Try

End Function

#End Region 'Methods

End Module

How to use it

Dim ExportPathString as String = ReadThisSetting(ExportDir)

and…

ExportPathString = "C:\TEMP"
SaveThisSetting(ExportDir, ExportPathingString)

More examples

Saving Integer Values

Dim iInterval as integer
iInterval = Convert.ToInt32(ReadThisSetting(MainTimerInterval )