Using isolated storage for application-specific data in C# .NET Part 2: directories

In this post we briefly went through the basics of isolated storage files. We saved some applications settings in a text file within the isolated storage reserved for an application at the user level.

We’re not restricted to save files in isolated storage. We can also create folders for organisation purposes. It’s very easy to create a folder. The IsolatedStorageFileStream example is almost identical to what we saw in the post referenced above. However, remember that the directory must be created first before you can save anything in it:

private static void SaveSettingsInIsoStorage()
{
	IsolatedStorageFile applicationStorageFileForUser = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForAssembly();
	applicationStorageFileForUser.CreateDirectory("AppSettings");
	IsolatedStorageFileStream applicationStorageStreamForUser = new IsolatedStorageFileStream("AppSettings/settings.txt", FileMode.Create, applicationStorageFileForUser);
	AppSettings settings = new AppSettings()
	{
		Job = "Programmer",
		Language = "C#",
		Name = "Andras"
	};
	string contents = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(settings);

	using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(applicationStorageStreamForUser))
	{
		sw.WriteLine(contents);
	}
}

It can be a good idea to check whether the directory exists before you create it:

string[] directoryNames = applicationStorageFileForUser.GetDirectoryNames("AppSettings");
if (!directoryNames.Any())
{
	applicationStorageFileForUser.CreateDirectory("AppSettings");
}

Read the next part here.

Read all posts dedicated to file I/O here.