Accessing the Isolated Storage Data of developer apps installed to emulator or unlocked Windows Phone device

While developing apps sometimes you feel the need to check the isolated storage of your app to check if things are working as intended. For emulators and devices running windows phone 8 or lower, Windows Phone Power Tools was quite handy but they still don’t support windows phone 8.1 emulators and their website does not show any information about any planned releases. I came across Isolated Storage Explorer tool which can help you out. MSDN describes it as

Isolated Storage Explorer (ISETool.exe) is a command-line tool that is installed with the Windows Phone SDK. You can use Isolated Storage Explorer to list, copy, and replace files and directories in your app’s local folder. You can use these commands to verify that the correct files are being saved in the correct location, or to test your app with files that you provide.

 
If you want to try a simpler method you can refer to the following link given below
https://windowsapptutorials.com/windows-phone/isolated-storage/how-to-access-isolated-or-local-storage-data-of-windows-phone-app-silverlightwinrt/
 

ISETool can be used with any emulator or device which targets WP 8.1/8/7.1. It is installed in the following location

Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Tools\IsolatedStorageExplorerTool


Here are some conditions which need to be true while working with ISE

  • The app that you want to test must be installed on the emulator or device
  • The emulator or device must be running, but the app doesn’t have to be running

 

Also note that you can’t do the following with ISE

 

  • You can’t view isolated storage for apps that you’ve installed from the Windows Phone Store.
  • You can’t view app settings that are stored in the local folder in Isolated Storage Explorer. These are settings that the app saved by using the IsolatedStorageSettings class.

 

Isolated Storage Explorer has the following syntax:

 

ISETool.exe <cmd[:param]> <target-device[:param]> <product-id> [<desktop-path>]

 

 

Now let us look at a few things that can be done using ISETool. Let us assume the product ID of the app we are developing is f8ce6878-0aeb-497f-bcf4-65be961d4bba. You can get the product ID of your app from WMAppManifest.xml file

 


 

Copying files from App’s isolated storage to computer

Follow the following steps to copy files from app’s isolated storage to computer

Step 1. Deploy the app

Deploy the app you want to test to the emulator or a device.

Step 2. Run the app

Run the app to create local files and directories.

Step 3. Get the app’s product ID

Get the Product GUID for the app specified in the ProductID attribute of the App element of the WMAppManifest.xml file.

Step 4. Navigate to ISETool.exe using command prompt

Open Command prompt in your computer and go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Tools\IsolatedStorageExplorerTool
directory.

cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Tools\IsolatedStorageExplorerTool

Step 5. Copy files from app’s isolated storage

To copy all of the files from the app’s local folder to your computer, type the following command using the Product GUID obtained in the previous steps and specify a target directory on your computer.

ISETool.exe ts <xd|de> <product-id> <desktop-path>

 

The example below shows how this can be done.

ISETool.exe ts xd f8ce6878-0aeb-497f-bcf4-65be961d4bba c:\data\myfiles

 

This tool creates an IsolatedStore folder under the directory you have specified and copies the content from app’s isolated storage to this location.

Replacing files in the local folder

You can use Isolated Storage Explorer to replace the files and directories in an app’s local folder on an emulator or a device with files and directories from your computer. Replacing files can be useful for testing an app. Follow the following steps.

Step 1. Deploy the app

Deploy the app you want to test to the emulator or a device.

Step 2. Run the app

Run the app to create local files and directories.

Step 3. Get the app’s product ID

Get the Product GUID for the app specified in the ProductID attribute of the App element of the WMAppManifest.xml file.

Step 4. Navigate to ISETool.exe using command prompt

Open Command prompt in your computer and go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Tools\IsolatedStorageExplorerTool
directory.

cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Tools\IsolatedStorageExplorerTool

Step 5. Replace files from app’s isolated storage

To replace all the files in the app’s local folder with files from your computer, type the following command using the Product GUID obtained in the previous steps and specify the source directory on your computer.

ISETool.exe rs <xd|de> <product-id> <desktop-path>

 

The following example shows how this can be done.

ISETool.exe rs xd f8ce6878-0aeb-497f-bcf4-65be961d4bba “C:\Data\My Files”

Listing files in the local folder

You can use Isolated Storage Explorer to list the files and directories in the local folder for an app.

Step 1. Deploy the app

Deploy the app you want to test to the emulator or a device.

Step 2. Run the app

Run the app to create local files and directories.

Step 3. Get the app’s product ID

Get the Product GUID for the app specified in the ProductID attribute of the App element of the WMAppManifest.xml file.

Step 4. Navigate to ISETool.exe using command prompt

Open Command prompt in your computer and go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Tools\IsolatedStorageExplorerTool
directory.

cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Tools\IsolatedStorageExplorerTool

Step 5. List the files

To list the files and directories at the root of the app’s local folder, type the following command using the Product GUID obtained in the previous steps.

ISETool.exe dir <xd|de> <product-id>

 

The following example shows a command that lists the files and directories at the root of the app’s local folder on the emulator.

ISETool.exe dir xd f8ce6878-0aeb-497f-bcf4-65be961d4bba

 

Uploading files from folder on computer to app’s local folder

The following command uploads all of the files from the C:\data\myfiles folder on the computer to the app’s local folder on the attached device.

ISETool.exe rs de f8ce6878-0aeb-497f-bcf4-65be961d4bba c:\data\myfiles

Getting a list of valid device targets

The following command lists the valid device targets and the device index for each device.

ISETool.exe EnumerateDevices

Listing the contents of a folder on connected device

Lists the contents of the \My Folder\Images subfolder in the app’s isolated store on the device at index 2.

ISETool.exe dir:”My Folder\Images” deviceindex:2 f8ce6878-0aeb-497f-bcf4-65be961d4bba

Note: You can use the enumerate devices command to get a list of all valid devices and their ids.