While developing your windows 8 app, you may need default configurations. In order to make things more generic, you may choose to keep your configuration in a separate xml to be deployed along with the app. Here, we will see how we can access a file deployed as part of deployment and use it.
In windows 8, access to folder system is provided by api's that are async in nature and 'Task' based. Therefore, we will use 'async' methods for this operation.
private async Task<SampleData> ReadFromConfigurationFile()
{
try
//get the package reference
Windows.ApplicationModel.Package package = Windows.ApplicationModel.Package.Current;
//get installed location detail
Windows.Storage.StorageFolder storageFolder = package.InstalledLocation;
// Use serializer class
XmlSerializer serializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(SampleData));
//file variable
StorageFile sampleFile = null;
//Get the file
sampleFile = await storageFolder.GetFileAsync("ConfigurationStored.xml");
}
catch (FileNotFoundException ex)
//handle exception
//open file in read mode
var file = await sampleFile.OpenAsync(FileAccessMode.Read);
//Read stream
Stream inStream = Task.Run(() => file.OpenRead()).Result;
return (SampleData)serializer.Deserialize(inStream);
catch (Exception ex)
return null;
Note the use of await and async pattern for handling the asynchronous operation.
If you want to modify the default value and write the file back, open file in write mode and after modification save the same at the installed location.
More sample on file access can be found at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/windowsapps/File-access-sample-d723e597.
Why
and not
Stream inStream = await Task.Run(() => file.OpenRead());
You can use await as well, depending upon the need of your application. Here, result property will ensure that data is read and then control is returned.