Web browsers History feature in Windows application

Question

Hi all I am planning on adding a History feature to my VB.net application I want this feature to do just like what it does in the IE browser. I want to save the data that the user had looked through and save it in the form of an XML file. This will help the user to go back and lookup the history and get what he worked on before..... Any ideas of how this can be achieved... Thanks in Advance.. Regards Chandu

candhe · Answer

Wiggum Thank you very much for the Input If you dont mind I understand what you told but I am a sort of newbie to this Serialization. If it is not a trouble would you be able to share a sample of what you told It will be very helpful for me. Thank you very much.

Adam Erstelle · Answer

From what I can understand is you want to serialize your form contents to a temporary xml file. What I would suggest is at the points you want to save the history call a function you will code for the form that will serialize it to an XML file where the filename will include the date/time. The reason this should go in the filename is so you can have multiple copies of the basically same file: eg: Form1.12222004123059.xml Form1.12222004123115.xml Form1.12222004231641.xml Then when the user hits back you call the file last created with a date prior to the currently loaded one and same for going forward un-serializing the file back to the form's data. Obviously you would want some form of purging so these xml files don't take over the client's hard drive space. This will solve your saving of the data but in order to have it relate to something the user can select to go back to you may want to create a hashtable which will have a user-friendly description of the 'history point' and its equavelent xml file. Hopefully I understand what you are asking.