Re: standard practices for storing user settings

From:

ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram)

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

28 Dec 2006 00:07:07 GMT

Message-ID:

<Preferences-20061228010442@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de>

Brandon McCombs <none@none.com> writes:

I wanted to know what the standard practice is for storing user
settings.

  One needs a per-user storage place as a starting point.
  I believe, this is:

http://download.java.net/jdk7/docs/api/java/util/prefs/Preferences.html

  However, you do not have to store all data there, just
  - for example - the name of the file oder database with the
  actual user data. See also:

      ?user.home User's home directory?

http://download.java.net/jdk7/docs/api/java/lang/System.html#getProperties()

Should I be creating a properties file when a user chooses to
save his settings?

  Simple name-value pairs are sufficient for a surprisingly
  large area of applications. Actually, every information can
  be stored this way.

  Other means include databases, XML-files or RDF-files. I am
  using my custom format ?Unotal?, which is like enriched
  S-expressions.

Are there other ways to do this same thing (besides using the
windows registry)?

In Java, there does not have to be a ?Windows registry?
within the runtime environment at all.