VB6 help.. again ;)

[Grooverider]

Having a little problem.

Reading settings in the following format from an INI file:

[general]
totalrecords=3[list]
infoname1=Blahblah
infoemail1=blah@blah.com
infoname2=Mr.White
infoemail2=White@sad.com
infoname3=Mr. Black
infoemail3=black@mr.com

When i'm deleting a record; say record 2, it reduces totalrecords to 2. However, i'm stuck with info1 and info3 as the two records.

I'm populating the .name into a listbox in the following way:

Read Total Accounts from INI

For i = 1 To TotalAccounts

AccountList.AddItem (ReadIniValue(App.Path & "\config.ini", "list", "infoname" & i))
AccountList.ItemData(AccountList.NewIndex) = i

Next i


Obviously.. there's a large problem with this. Any suggestions?

[Zippygoose]

I'm not exactly sure what you are trying to do here.

Could you post the business requirement/homework assignment that needs to be accomplished along with your code?

[Hachima]

More details would help. Is this a structure you created or one you have to work with? The way you have it, you have to re-write the entire list to update the numbers you are using.

If you are coming up with this structure my suggestion is use XML.

[Niceshot23]

going by what you wrote, id open the ini file and put it all into 1 string and manipulate it instead of actually using the readini function.... here's what i suggest

dim strText as string
dim intStart as long
dim intEnd as long
dim intRecords as int
dim intRecord as long
dim strname as string
dim stremail as string

'strtext should equal to the
strText = "[general]
totalrecords=3[list]
infoname1=Blahblah
infoemail1=blah@blah.com
infoname2=Mr.White
infoemail2=White@sad.com
infoname3=Mr. Black
infoemail3=black@mr.com"

intstart = instr(strtext, 1, "[general]")
intstart = instr(strtext, intstart, chr$(13))

'if it equals 0 then it means that this entry wasnt in the ini file
if intStart = 0 then exit sub

'now you should be at totalrecords= line
intstart = instr(strtext, intstart, "=")
intstart = intstart + 1

intend = instr(strtext, intstart, "[list]")

intrecords = mid(strtext, intstart, intend - intstart)

'now make a loop looking for "infoname1="
intrecord = 1
do until intstart = 0
'name
intstart = instr(strtext, intstart, "infoname")
intstart = instr(strtext, intstart, "=")
intstart = intstart + 1
intend = instr(strtext, intstart, chr$(13)
strname = mid(strtext, intstart, intend - intstart)

'email
intstart = instr(strtext, intstart, "infoemail")
intstart = instr(strtext, intstart, "=")
intstart = intstart + 1
intend = instr(strtext, intstart, chr$(13)
stremail = mid(strtext, intstart, intend - intstart)

'intrecord is the number of times it goes through this loop, meaning that there are that many "infoname"'s regardless of the number next to it
intrecord = intrecord + 1
loop

once you're complete, using all the numbers and strings you've grabbed, you should be able to create a new string and use that to overwrite the ini file ....


i havent ran this i just typed this out in the comments ... dont have vb at work but i've worked 6 years in vb so i know what im doing ... besides, im only going on what you've written ....

[Hachima]

that seems like a lot of messy hard coding just to grab INI data when there are already working methods to grab the key value pairs. I'd rather just make an INI file class to deal with it. Here is what I'd use in C#. You can probably do a VB equivalent.

public class IniFile
{
public string path;

[DllImport("kernel32")]
private static extern long WritePrivateProfileString(string section,
string key, string val, string filePath);
[DllImport("kernel32")]
private static extern int GetPrivateProfileString(string section,
string key, string def, StringBuilder retVal,
int size, string filePath);


public IniFile(string INIPath)
{
path = INIPath;
}

public void IniWriteValue(string Section, string Key, string Value)
{
WritePrivateProfileString(Section, Key, Value, this.path);
}


public string IniReadValue(string Section, string Key)
{
StringBuilder temp = new StringBuilder(255);
int i = GetPrivateProfileString(Section, Key, "", temp,
255, this.path);
return temp.ToString();

}
}

[Shots]

The only way to do it is to rewrite the section, as you've found out. Either calling WritePrivateProfileString in a loop (to null the old and then write then new) or calling WritePrivateProfileSection after you've manually rebuilt the Section in a string.

[Grooverider]

Yeah, shots you've called it.

I've decided to make it so that the final entry in the ini is moved to plug the deleted hole..

[Niceshot23]

its also pretty easy to just write to the registry....

[Grooverider]

Nah, I want the data to be transferrable. Registry isn't great for it imo