any way to store the values of the controls of a Manipulate so that one can reuse them in the future excutions

Question

I’m using Manipulate[] to adjust several parameters, which will eventually generate some figures. After I get the desired view, I’d like to store the set of control parameters so that I can reuse them in the future.

Currently, I created two controls “recordControlParameters” and “userecordControlParameters” as flags, to let the code print out the list of control parameters as a list, and then paste their values to an assignment of these parameters at the beginning of the module, which could work, but the problem is, next time when I execute this code, I can no longer adjust any of these parameters if I turn on the “userecordControlParameters” mode.

I hope to find a way to be able to skip the assignment at the beginning of the code. For example, if I want to still adjust {b,c}, then I hope that, once I’m given this list at the beginning, I can skip the assignment of them.

The essense of this question is: given a list allvariables={a,b,c,d},variables2skip={b,d} and valueList={1,2,3,4}, with a,b,c,d already assigned to some nuemrical values by the control itself, how can we reassign a and c upon using allvariables and variables2skip and valueList?

Or is there any more elegant ways to cope with this?

Below is a minimal example (the real code has a large number of controls)

DynamicModule[{a, b, c, d, e, g, userecordedControlParameters, 
recordControlParameters}, 
Manipulate[
Module[{}, 
If[userecordedControlParameters == 
 1, {a, b, c, d} = {1, 2, 3, 0}]; 
If[recordControlParameters == 1, Print[{a, b, c, d}]];   
Plot[a*x^3 + b*x^2 + c*x + d, {x, -4, 4}]], 
Evaluate@manipulateControlLayoutUsingDivider[
 "Row"]@{Style["Amplitudes Sines", 15, Bold], {{a, 1, "a"}, 0, 
  3}, {{b, 1, "b"}, 0, 3}, Delimiter, 
 Delimiter, {{g, 1, "g"}, 0, 10}, Delimiter, {{e, 2, "e"}, 0, 5}, 
 Delimiter, {{c, 1, "c"}, 0, 4}, {{d, 0, "d"}, 0, 2}, 
 Delimiter, {{recordControlParameters, 0, 
   "recordControlParameters"}, {0, 
   1}}, {{userecordedControlParameters, 0, 
   "userecordedControlParameters"}, {0, 1}}}, Alignment -> Center,
 ControlPlacement -> Left]]

Answer 1

I haven't used this myself, but it looks like the SaveDefinitions option is what you want, if I understand you correctly...? Manipulate also has some other options that look helpful, like UnsavedVariables for those values you want overwritten each time.

Failing that, you're probably looking at doing the saving/loading manually using something like PersistentSymbol; you would write out to PersistentSymbol["myDataWhatever"] whenever the settings changed and/or you wanted to save their values, and then you can access that data again even in a later session, so it's just a matter of loading up the right settings in Initialization.