Trying to create a custom partial settings file

Question

I'm trying to create a custom settings class to store some user-scoped settings. I did this few months ago and it worked just fine, but I can't remember all the details and don't have access to the source code anymore. Here's what I have so far:

CustomSettings.cs

internal sealed partial class CustomSettings : global::System.Configuration.ApplicationSettingsBase
{
    private static CustomSettings defaultInstance = ((CustomSettings)(global::System.Configuration.ApplicationSettingsBase.Synchronized(new CustomSettings())));

    public static CustomSettings Default
    {
        get
        {
            return defaultInstance;
        }
    }

    [global::System.Configuration.UserScopedSettingAttribute()]
    public global::System.Collections.Generic.List<global::LearningProject.Types.Product> Products
    {
        get
        {
            return ((global::System.Collections.Generic.List<global::LearningProject.Types.Product>)(this["Products"]));
        }
        set
        {
            this["Products"] = value;
        }
    }
}

Product.cs

[Serializable]
public class Product
{
    [XmlAttribute("Name")]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    [XmlAttribute("Id")]
    public int Id { get; set; }
}

Here's the App.config file, and contains a sample Product:

<configuration>
<configSections>
    <sectionGroup name="userSettings" type="System.Configuration.UserSettingsGroup, System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" >
      <section name="LearningProject.Settings1" type="System.Configuration.ClientSettingsSection, System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" allowExeDefinition="MachineToLocalUser" requirePermission="false" />
      <section name="LearningProject.CustomSettings" type="System.Configuration.ClientSettingsSection, System, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" allowExeDefinition="MachineToLocalUser" requirePermission="false" />
    </sectionGroup>
</configSections>
<startup><supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/></startup>
  <userSettings>
        <LearningProject.CustomSettings>
          <setting name="Products" serializeAs="Xml">
            <ArrayOfProduct>
              <Product>
                <Name>Product1</Name>
                <Id>ProductID</Id>
              </Product>
            </ArrayOfProduct>
          </setting>
        </LearningProject.CustomSettings>
    </userSettings>
</configuration>

Now I get null when I try to get a list of Products:

List<Product> products = CustomSettings.Default.Products;

Which means either I'm doing something wrong (xml attributes, maybe?) or I'm missing a step. Also notice that a Settings1.settings (generated by VS) already exists, and my CustomSettings class is just adding methods to the default auto-generated settings file. I was just wondering if anyone has ever done this. Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

In app.config replace

<setting name="Products" serializeAs="Xml">
  <ArrayOfProduct>
    <Product>
      <Name>Product1</Name>
      <Id>ProductID</Id>
    </Product>
  </ArrayOfProduct>
</setting>

To

<setting name="Products" serializeAs="Xml">
  <value>
    <ArrayOfProduct>
      <Product Name="Product1" Id="1" />
    </ArrayOfProduct>
  </value>
</setting>

How I realized this

CustomSettings.Default.Products = new List<Product>();
CustomSettings.Default.Products.Add(new Product() { Id = 1, Name = "Product1" });
CustomSettings.Default.Save();

Now local config (%appdatalocal%\project_name..\user.config) contains the correct value