Saving User Settings using Telerik’s PersistenceManager

There are many times when we need a way to save user settings for our Silverlight Applications. We had one such scenario in our application & thanks to Telerik's PersistenceManager this task becomes super easy. In order for you to enable saving the properties/ selected values of the UI controls all you have to do is

1. Add a reference to
    
   • Telerik.Windows.Controls
   • Telerik.Windows.PersistenceFramework

   Note: If you are not able to find PersistenceFramework binaries in the list of available Telerik assemblies while adding a reference, just look for it into the Telerik Installation folder.

   C:\Program Files (x86)\Telerik\RadControls for Silverlight Q3 2012\Binaries\Silverlight
    

2. Add a persistenceStorageID to all the UI controls to which you want to save the properties for
   
   <UserControl x:Class="PersitentSettingDemo.MainPage"
   xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
   xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
   xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
   xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
   xmlns:telerik="http://schemas.telerik.com/2008/xaml/presentation"
   mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="640" d:DesignHeight="480">
   <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">
   <Grid.RowDefinitions>
   <RowDefinition Height="35"/>
   <RowDefinition Height="35"/>
   <RowDefinition Height="35"/>
   <RowDefinition Height="35"/>
   <RowDefinition Height="35"/>
   <RowDefinition Height="35"/>
   <RowDefinition Height="35"/>
   <RowDefinition Height="35"/>
   <RowDefinition Height="35"/>
   </Grid.RowDefinitions>
   <telerik:RadNumericUpDown Grid.Row="0" Width="200" telerik:PersistenceManager.StorageId="myNumericUpDown"/>
   <CheckBox Grid.Row="1" Width="200" Content="Check Me" Margin="0,5,0,0" telerik:PersistenceManager.StorageId="myCheckbox"/>
   <telerik:RadComboBox Grid.Row="2" Width="200" Margin="0,5,0,0" telerik:PersistenceManager.StorageId="myComboBox">
   <telerik:RadComboBoxItem Content="Item1"/>
   <telerik:RadComboBoxItem Content="Item2"/>
   <telerik:RadComboBoxItem Content="Item3"/>
   <telerik:RadComboBoxItem Content="Item4"/>           
   </telerik:RadComboBox>
   <RadioButton Content="Check Me" Width="200" Grid.Row="3" Margin="0,5,0,0" telerik:PersistenceManager.StorageId="myRadioButton"/>
   <telerik:RadButton Content="Save Settings" Click="RadButton_Click" Grid.Row="4" Width="200" HorizontalAlignment="Left"/>
   <telerik:RadButton Content="Restore Settings" Click="RadButton_Click_1" Grid.Row="4" Width="200" HorizontalAlignment="Right"/>
   </Grid>
   </UserControl>
    
3. Save the user settings in Isolated Storage

   IsolatedStorageProvider isoProvider = new IsolatedStorageProvider();
   isoProvider.SaveToStorage();

   And That's all. Just follow the 3 steps & you can now save the properties of all your UI controls & retrieve them when needed.

   Retrieval of the settings is as easy as a method call

   isoProvider.LoadFromStorage();

   Super Easy, isn't it?

   Here is my code behind if you are feeling lazy & just want to reuse it

   using System.Windows;
   using System.Windows.Controls;
   using Telerik.Windows.Persistence.Storage;
   namespace PersitentSettingDemo
   {
   public partial class MainPage : UserControl
   {
   IsolatedStorageProvider isoProvider = new IsolatedStorageProvider();
   public MainPage()
   {
   InitializeComponent();
   }
   private void RadButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
   {   
   isoProvider.SaveToStorage();
   }
   private void RadButton_Click_1(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
   {
   isoProvider.LoadFromStorage();
   }
   }
   }

   To test click on the Save Settings button, then refresh the page & notice that all controls have restored to their default values.

   Now click on the Restore Settings button & notice again that all user settings are now populated again.

   On a side note if you want to save the user settings for all your controls in a container then just attach the StorageId property to that container control instead.

   For example, I could have achieved the same result by adding

   <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" telerik:PersistenceManager.StorageId="mygridContainer">

   & removing the storage ID from all individual controls.

   On another side note & an important one; The StorageId could be any arbitrary unique string that the Framework can use to identify the control uniquely.

   More details on it here:

   http://www.telerik.com/help/silverlight/persistence-framework-getting-started.html

   As far as I know, it has to be unique for every instance of IsolatedStorageProvider but I will leave that test to another blog post.

   I will also need to figure out how this behaves in a multiuser scenario. Will write as soon as I have more information about it.

   For Now use this simple technique & nJoy Coding. P.S. Attached the demo project for your reference.