How Settings.Default work for multiple applications accessing same dll - c

I have two applications refering to a dll (A.dll). The dlls are refernced from both application's local directories. Application1 use Settings.Default to store string to the dll (A.dll). Will those strigs that are saved to settings of A.Dll by Applciation1 be accessible to Application2?

As far as I'm aware, each application setting should have it's own settings file. Furthermore, if you have used a user-scoped settings, then each user from each application will have their own settings files.
You can find full details from the following links:
Using Settings in C#
Application Settings Overview

Related

How does a WinForms .Net sub-application in a solution embed its app.config into itself?

I am using a variation of Jeff Atwood’s Unhandled Exception handler it steps in when there is an Unhandled Exception in the application. It then logs the error, generates a screen shot and notifies the user.
When compiled in a solution the project generates an EXE that is called when needed. In updating the program I am using Visual Studio 13 to edit the existing settings items in the project properties. In the code I use commands such as this from ConfigurationManager.
string appProduct = unhandledExceptions.Properties.Settings.Default.AppProduct;
I was happy to see that it worked and reflected the changes I made in the IDE. However I couldn’t find the settings in the solutions generated confg file (MyApplication.exe.config). I assumed it was reaching back to the other project folder for the UnhandledExceptions.exe.config.
I created an installer and installed it to a virtual machine. My settings carried over, but again I could not see a config file.
It turns out the values are embedded in the executable UnhandledException.exe.
The project does not have any resources listed. Searching the web and StackOverflow looking a questions that want to do this, and there are a lot of them, it seems this was generally considered not possible and not desirable. Questions usually end in “You don’t want to do that, it’s called config for a reason”.
I may want to turn this off, so it is editable externally. The properties of app.config in both projects are identical.
What setting is making this possible after all? Is it a new capability with Visual Studio 2013?
There is no Visual Studio setting required. If you don’t want the user to have access to the configuration file, don’t include it in the distribution. One can always be added if the settings names are known.
In the description below application generically represents the name of the application being used.
I’ve found through observation some interesting things about the way ConfigurationManager works.
For User settings it will look in the following places in order of priority:
user.config for the application in the user’s AppData area
application.exe.config in the program folder
application.exe itself
Each setting is searched for individually. If your application requests a setting that is not found in either user.config or the application.exe.config it will get it from the executable.
For Application settings it looks in the following places in order of priority:
application.exe.config in the program folder
application.exe itself.
There is no equivalent to user.config for application settings.
Opening the application.exe in the Visual Studio IDE does not reveal a resource for the configuration information.
application.exe.config is handy because it can be modified externally and used as a default value for new installations. Once a setting is overridden in the user.config the value in application.exe.config is ignored.
The same is not true for the AppSettings section, the older configuration method from .Net 1.0. If I delete the configuration file it does not have them in the executable.
These observations were made with Visual Studio 2013 Update 4 and tested in Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. I suspect they are true in all versions.

Silverlight fails to fetch resource assemblies

We use the .NET resource manager to localize our Silverlight application and want to embed the satellite assemblies for the german language ("de") into the XAP file. Therefor, we set the neutral language to "en" and added "de" to the list of supported languages in the csproj file. This works fine, when we build the project locally. If we build the Silverlight solution with MSBuild (TFS), Silverlight will try to fetch the satellite assemblies with HTTP requests from /ClientBin/de/*.dll instead of taking those files embeded into the XAP (which do exist). Because the webserver returns 404 error codes for the non existent files, Silverlight crashes with an initialization error.
It turned out that if we remove a custom TFS build activity manipulating the assembly info code files, the Silverlight applications works as expected. Strangely, after re-enabling the activity the compiled XAP application still works (verified for two different build definitions working on seperate branches). The custom activity manipulates the assembly attributes AssemblyConfiguration, AssemblyCompany, AssemblyProduct, AssemblyCopyright, AssemblyTrademark, AssemblyVersion, and AssemblyFileVersion.
Some additional hints:
The custom activity will change the assembly info files before any compilation is done
Compiling the manipulated sources with Visual Studio will build a working XAP
The content of the XAP files (working and not working) is equal (nearly same sizes, no difference in manifest file)
The resource manager is instantiated using ResourceManager("Resource", Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly())
My questions are:
Why does Silverlight try to fetch those satellite assemblies from /ClientBin/de/ instead of just using those in the XAP file?
What kind of attribute in the assembly info file could cause such a behavior?
Why does re-enabling the versioning activity not break the XAP again?
And here's the solution: We use a tool named "Total Commander" for editing a file in the generated XAP to adjust the URL the (generic) client connects to. Since we added the localization dlls, editing the XAP with the Total Commander will lead to the behavior described above. If we manipulate the XAP with WinRAR or the internal Windows archive manager, all works as expected.
Edit: After comparing the XAP files we found, that Total Commander uses the backslash (\) to seperate directories, whereas WinRAR and the Silverlight Tools use slashes (/). It seems that we discovered a hidden Silverlight feature here ;-)

ILMerging Windows Forms application with couple localizations problem

I've created a Windows Forms (C#) application called "Image Processing". It uses many external dlls so I decided to use ILMerge to merge all of them into one exe file and it worked. But today I've localized my application. After building I had 3 new folders in Debug folder: "en-US", "ru-RU", "uk-UA" with one dll with the same name "ImageProcessing.resources.dll". So I included all of them in a ILMerge command:
ILMerge.exe /t:winexe /out:ImageProcessingRelease.exe ImageProcessing.exe AForge.dll AForge.Imaging.dll AForge.Math.dll DevExpress.Data.v10.2.dll DevExpress.Utils.v10.2.dll DevExpress.XtraBars.v10.2.dll DevExpress.XtraEditors.v10.2.dll FreeImageNET.dll uk-UA\ImageProcessing.resources.dll ru-RU\ImageProcessing.resources.dll en-US\ImageProcessing.resources.dll
My program stores language locale in settings. After merging I can't change language, but settings are changing.
I don't know what else I can include here for more details so tell me please what.
The answer is simple. ILMerge is not suitable in this case, as .NET Framework relies on the folder structure to determine which resource file to use.
It is meaningless to combine assemblies in that way, and some third party assembly vendor's end user license does not permit you to merge their product with your own assemblies.

"Out of browser" web application running at Start-Up?

I've become familiar with the new concept of "out of browser" web applications, supported in the recent Silverlight, JavaFX, Adobe AIR etc.
Listening recently to a podcast on the subject by Scott Hanselman, I've become aware that one of the purposes behind these new architectures is to allow for "desktop-application-feel". Also, I understand some (or all) of these allow for some offline access to a sandbox of resources. This really sounds as if these frameworks could be an alternative to "real" desktop applications, as long as the application does not require messing with the user's machine (i.e. access to peripherals, certain file IO, etc).
I have a very specific question. My application needs to run at start-up. Is it possible to do so using such a framework without requiring the user to download and run a certain executable?
For example, I could always direct the user to download a small EXE that will put a .lnk file in the start-up directory, but I want to avoid such a patch.
To summarize: is it possible to have an out-of-browser web application setup itself to run at start-up without requiring file download?
To further clarify, this question does not come from an "evil" place, but rather from trying to decide whether "out-of-browser" frameworks are indeed a proper alternative to a desktop application, for my specific requirements.
The BkMark example here shows how to start an application on startup using Adobe Air. So, yes it is possible.
So, here's the deal: web apps in general will have a security context around them, and by default won't have access to write to the filesystem (outside of a temp files), access the registry, etc.
One way is, as you said, have the user run something or configure it so the lnk is executed on startup.
Another way, and I think, more in line of what you want, is that the user can run the program himself, click some button in the application, and it's configured.
I know with Java you could do this, but the user has to allow full access to their system, because your app would need to change System configuration. Then you could just configure it (by writing a lnk to your WebStart JNLP in the Startup folder)
For Internet Exploder, Javascript apps do have write access to the disk.
For other (better-secured) browsers you will either need to have a download, or Adobe AIR.
Assuming you are building for Windows, launching an executable at startup can be done several ways.
For user session startup, you can achieve this either by putting a lnk file in the appropriate folder, or with a registry entry. For operating system startup, you can achieve this with a registry entry. There are several permutations:
run application once on boot (UI not allowed)
run application every boot (UI not allowed)
start service every boot according to policy set in registry
run application once on user session start
run application every user session
Since an out of browser application has UI I expect you mean run application every user session and in this case you may as well put an LNK file in the user's startup folder.
I just created a shortcut for an SL4 OOB application, and this was the Target of the shortcut:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Silverlight\sllauncher.exe" 2635882436.localhost
A search of my disk revealed that location 2635882436.localhost is a folder.
C:\Users\<mylogin>\AppData\LocalLow\Microsoft\Silverlight\OutOfBrowser\2635882436.localhost
I rather doubt an OOB app of any type could place a shortcut in the Startup folder unless you somehow obtained Full Trust.

Silverlight create and execute file server-side

In my app i have the option of viewing a file that opens a window application (google earth).
In order to do that i wish to create a custom file server-side under a certain relative path (eg. "//Files") and then tell the server to execute it.
How can i do this?
Thank you
You would need to expose the relative paths to your clients and then have them link to that location. How you set it up will depend heavily on what type of server we are talking about (Windows or Linux, IIS or Apache, etc).

Resources