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  • Sean4u

    by Published on August 19th, 2011 03:54 PM
    1. Categories:
    2. Java Tutorials

    Where can I store my application data?
    I see a lot of people starting threads because they're struggling to persist (often) a little bit of data from one run of their Java application to the next. The offered solutions are often some kind of jiggery-pokery involving java.io.File. Not only is File handling a cross-platform morass (our favourite OSes can't even agree on path separators, let alone filesystem roots and GoodPlacesToPutApplicationData™), but every so often another limited-resource computing device appears, some of them without a natural filesystem at all.

    So if we can't store data in files, where can we store it? Enter the Java Preferences API in the java.util.prefs package. Preferences is a platform neutral way to store a small amount of simple data. It offers support to store Strings and built-in data types and retrieve them without having to worry how they are persisted. You simply obtain a Preferences instance, store your value-to-be-persisted on a key, exit your app and sleep easy. The next time you start your app, you obtain the Preferences instance and invoke get([key you used previously], [default if nothing's there]). Ideal - for simple use. ...