WPF - Save user credentials at first start persistent

Question

What is my purpose?

I would like to save user credentials at the first start of my application.

What is the starting situation?

At the first start I have a configuration dialog, which allows the support-employee of my company to configure the application firstly. At these dialog he can also set sundry credentials. I need these credentials for every user, who starts the app. (it is a network-based application)

May some solutions?

I know, there are 'user settings' in WPF. But these are not persistent. That means, I lose the credentials, if the application is closed and another user is starting the app. But I need these credentials persistent. And for every user.

Of course, there are also 'application settings'. But these settings I cant set dynamically at the first start of my app. So I need to set the credentials for every customer at the development and compile one executive per customer.

Furthermore I can also save these credentials in a special database. But to create a database, only for this purpose seems a little bit to huge for me.

Would be really nice, if somebody could help me. :-)

Answer 1

You could store it in a local SQLite database, it takes just a few lines of code and one table but either store the hashes or make sure credentials are encrypted.

Also, user settings are persisted and as long as the other user is using his or her own Windows logon their user setting will not overwrite user settings of other users. However these are stored in a plain text config file so if storing credentials you should at least encrypt the values...