Accessing data without using database (.Net 2005).

Priyamtheone

16y3.6k

Is it possible to add, edit, view and delete records using a file only (instead of a database) and .Net 2005 (VB.Net/C#)?
The concept is that a file that'll work more-or-less like a database. One can add, edit, view, delete and query data to and from the file. The file, either cannot be opened directly or data inside the file should be in some encrypted form so that even if the file is opened no one can comprehend it. Data inside the file can only be manipulated by a front end application i.e. .Net 2005.

If there's some methodology like this then please refer me some links to tutorials and whitepapers. Thanks in advance.

6 Replies

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Sam Hobbs16y ago
Accepted answer

One thing about your question is not clear to me; are you able to design the format of the disk file or is there a format that already exists that you must write a program to access and use?

.Net and Visual Studio support use of Objects for data, and you can create data sources from objects. That way, you can store the data on disk in may ways. There are various ways to store data on disk; look for articles and documentation about serializing data and about persistence. For example, the MSDN has an article called "Walkthrough: Persisting an Object in Visual Basic". There are many other articles on the subject. Also .Net has many cryptographic classes. I think what you can do is to persist objects (class instances) to stream, then encrypt that data and then store that to disk as binary data. To reverse that, read the binary data into memroy, then decrypt that, then un-persiste it back to objects. Another option is to store the data using XML and use the EncryptedXml and related classes. It is possible to use the XmlSerializer class and the EncryptedXml and related classes together.
Sam Hobbs16y ago

Please see How to access fields and values from an XML Database; it has some sample code from me that shows use of XmlSerializer.

Next look at the documentation of the EncryptedXml class. There is a sample there. The sample can be intimidating; you need to spend some time studying it. I will provide a general description of how I used XmlSerializer and EncryptedXml together. Note that the following will encrypt and decrypt the entire document; if you want to do just specific fields (portions) of a XML document then you will need to do that differently from the following.

To deserialize the XML in, use XmlDocument.Load to load the XML. Then use that document to create a EncryptedXml object.

Instead of using FileStream to serialize the XML out, use TextWriter, then use TextWriter.ToString() to get the XML as a string. Then use XmlDocument.LoadXml to load the XML from the string. Then use XmlDocument.FirstChild.NextSibling to get the root node. Then cast the XmlNode to an XmlElement and then you can use that in EncryptedXml.EncryptData. There is probably a simpler more direct way to do that but that is what I have so far.
Priyamtheone16y ago
No Sam, don't take it otherwise. I like the posts of both of you. Rather your post contains more details. In terms of encryption & decryption of XML files, Mahesh & you suggested similar approach. And that's what I was looking for. If you look into my post carefully you see that's what I replied to Mahesh- 'Most peers suggested this approach'. This includes you too. Thanks anyway.
Sam Hobbs16y ago
Note that if you want more information about what I said, then you need to check the checkbox indicating you like my answer. Otherwise I will assume you do not want the help I am offering.
Priyamtheone16y ago
Thanks Mahesh. I have been looking for something like this. Most peers suggested this approach. Also I would like to gain more knowledge on encryption and decryption of the xml files before and after saving the data. Can you please refer me some tutorials on it. Thanks once again for your suggestion.
Mahesh Chand16y ago
You can store data in XML files or text files. These are two common ways to do this without a database a database. You can encrypt and data before read or write data.