Persistent storage for packages

Question

How can I implement persistent storage for packages/applications? For example, how can my package have settings which persist across sessions?

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I have implemented this more than once in the past. This question is to share our solutions and keep them for future reference. This the kind of application where reliability is paramount because it is often used in packages that may be distributed to many people.

Things to pay attention to:

• Compatibility with different Mathematica versions. This is a typical requirement for packages. Solutions must be compatible with 10.0 and all later versions. Earlier version compatibility is even better, but I'm not asking for it because associations are too convenient ...

• Persistent storage is useful for package settings. Solutions presented here shouldn't stand in the way of changing the settings format in future versions of the package (adding or removing settings, changing the format, etc.)

• Corrupted storage files must be handled gracefully.

• Given that this is meant to be included in other packages, simple and short solutions are preferred.

• Anything else I didn't think of?

Answer 1

As stated in comments above, it does not meet all your requirements. Nevertheless I find it extremely useful and applicable in many situations.

That is to use CurrentValue[$FrontEnd, {TaggingRules, "MyApp", "setting1"}] to reference your package settings.

Advantages:

• no additional files

  Mathematica will automatically store them in init.m file. You don't even need to check whether your package is installed, which is very, very useful when it has a complex installation/autoload/updating scheme.

• it is part of Mathematica setup, could it be more compatible?

  Tagging rules are there since V4 or something (not sure if this works there but should be no problem in V7, the earliest version I worked with)

• it supports $FrontEndSession inheritance (see FrontEnd options)

  so you don't need to worry about switching off something that was enabled temporarily

• automatically translates to nested rules:

  CurrentValue[$FrontEnd, {TaggingRules, "MyApp", "param1"}] = True

  translates to: {..., "MyApp" -> {"param1" -> True}}

  with syntax that feels like using Associations

• hard to corrupt that setup since it is done automatically

• for missing entries there is an undocumented 3rd argument of CurrentValue

  It sets that value if you try to reference a missing key:

  CurrentValue[$FrontEnd, {TaggingRules}]
  

  {..., "MyApp" -> {"param1" -> True}}

  CurrentValue[
    $FrontEnd, {TaggingRules, "MyApp", "param2"}, "defaultparam2"
  ] === "defaultparam2"
  

  True

  CurrentValue[$FrontEnd, {TaggingRules}]
  

  {..., "MyApp" -> {"param1" -> True, "param2" -> "defaultparam2"}}

Issues:

• not critical but a one needs to be aware of this bug and available workarounds: Notebook's TaggingRules inherit too much