Saving in .Net Forms

Alex Campbell

Hi everyone,

I'm relatively new to coding, but what experience I do have is mostly in C#.

A brief explanation of what I'm doing.

I'm trying to put together an application to help with my business. its windows forms in C#. I'm going to use this application mainly to write new quotes, edit quotes, and view/print quotes. I've put together a form using multiple text boxes to enter my information into, first name, last name, phone number, etc.

My problem, and Question to you.

I've tried using a stream writer to save to a file and I even tried a JSON file system. I either get a blank save file, or all the text boxes are jumbled together.

What would be the best method to save all the information correctly and also be able to open in another form to view and print later on?

Thanks!

8 Replies

Know the answer? Post it — somebody with the same question will find it here.

Vishal Joshi4y ago
Got your question. As you need to write JSON format to file try the below code. All you need to do is serialize your data before save to file.

Below code support for .NET Core 3.0+ and .NET 5+
using System.Text.Json;
using System.Text.Json.Serialization;

List _data = new List();
_data.Add(new data()
{
    Id = 1,
    FirstName = "User",
    LastName = "UserLast"
});

string json = JsonSerializer.Serialize(_data);
File.WriteAllText(@"D:\path.json", json);
To Achieve the same in the previous .net framework .NET core 3.0 and and .NET 5 than you can use Newtonsoft.
https://www.nuget.org/packages/Newtonsoft.Json/
+2
Vishal Yelve4y ago
Hi Alex,
use Environment.NewLine this will add a new line
string createText = "Hello and Welcome" + Environment.NewLine;
File.WriteAllText(path, createText);
+2
Nitin Sontakke4y ago
Furthermore, databases have built-in security implemented. Text files on disks can be added / modified / deleted by anyone having access to your box. As a safety measure you also need to keep copies of these somewhere else.
+2
Nitin Sontakke4y ago
There are several ways to do this. Typically, databases are used for this purpose. Databases are good because data is stored centrally and most importantly data can later be used for generating reports, searching information, etc. This becomes difficult / slow / cumbersome if data is stored is text files. Anyway!

If you still wish to continue with text files, there are couple of approaches. One is to save data in comma separated values (csv) format. However, this format doesn't not support hierarchical data storage.

Another approach is to use object serialization and save data in (now popular) javaScript Object Notation (json) format. This supports hierarchical data storage. If you insist on text data storage this probably is best.

Please DO NOT get intimidated by the heavy terminology. It is quite simple than how it sounds.

Hope it helps! Should you need any other / more help, please do let us know.
+2
Sam Hobbs4y ago
I think you will need to provide some sample source code. At least a sample of the output that shows all the text boxes together into one line.

Are you writing all the data using one WriteLine? If so then use a separate WriteLine for each item.

A blank save file can be the result of not calling the Flush method. See the documentation about that.
+2
Amit Mohanty4y ago
Try this
if (!File.Exists(txtFilePath))
    File.Create(txtFilePath).Dispose();

using (StreamWriter streamWriter = new StreamWriter(txtFilePath, true))
{
    streamWriter.WriteLine("your text");
    streamWriter.Close();
}
+2
Alex Campbell4y ago
Thanks for the response.

I've tried this method and it does allow the user to save the file, but it still puts all the text boxes together into one line. How can I separate all the text boxes so that they will open as individual lines?
+2
Vishal Yelve4y ago
If you want to save data in text file. Use below article. https://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/009464/save-data-to-text-file-in-windows-form-using-C-Sharp/
+2