Typed DataSet Goodness

I was working on VisualBlogger once again, and I was really getting frustrated with using app.config to store blog configurations. Using a ConfigSections wrapper was kind of overkill, and so was having the app dependent on an Access database. Andy Smith turned me onto the idea of using a Typed DataSet... something that I had never done before. I had no idea how cool these things are. I just built an XML file with the desired elements, loaded them up into a DataSet, spit out the schema XSD file using the DataSet.WriteXmlSchema method. Using the VS.NET Schema editor, I was able to change the data types, set constraints, and even create automatically incrementing primary keys. From there, I generated a DataSet using the Schema | Generate Dataset option, and voila! Now I have a simple method for accessing typed data, without having to use a database.

So now, the code that I use looks something like this:

1Try

2    Dim BlogTable As Blogs.BlogDataTable = Blogs.Blog

3    Dim row As Blogs.BlogRow

4    Try

5        row = BlogTable.FindByID(CInt(BlogID.Text))

6    Catch

7    End Try

8    If row Is Nothing Then

9        BlogTable.AddBlogRow("DotText", BlogTitle.Text, BlogAlias.Text, BlogUrl.Text, _

10        BlogUserName.Text, Base64.Encrypt(BlogPassword.Text, Base64.Identifier), False)

11    Else

12        row.Title = BlogTitle.Text

13        row._Alias = BlogAlias.Text

14        row.Url = BlogUrl.Text

15        row.UserName = BlogUserName.Text

16        row.Password = Base64.Encrypt(BlogPassword.Text, Base64.Identifier)

17        row.AcceptChanges()

18    End If

19Catch Ex As Exception

20    MsgBox("The settings could not be saved." & Environment.NewLine & Ex.Message & _

21    Environment.NewLine & Ex.StackTrace)

22End Try

Note lines 9 and 10. Generating a Typed DataSet gives me a 1 line method that allows me to add a new record. That's freakin cool. You may notice that I wrapped the built-in FindByID method in a Try/Catch block. This is because there are a few situations where BlogID.Text would be blank, and an empty string doesn't convert to an integer well. If it doesn't work, I don't want an error to be thrown, I just want it to keep going.

I like this Typed DataSet thing. It's pretty cool. Great for situations where a full-blown database is not possible/not practical. This allows me to have an easily-editable configuration system for VisualBlogger that is not subject to the limitations of the System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings namespace. Speaking of VisualBlogger, it is nearly feature complete. I'm waiting for some information from a few outside sources before I can wrap up the feature stragglers. In the meantime, I'm going to try to add a local autosaving feature, because I've lost three posts in the past 2 days due to errors found in testing. Infortunately, it seems that Passport is down again, so I can't even log into MSN Messenger to talk to the people I need to talk to.