Working with Windows Registry using Visual Basic 6 - A complete Tutorial

[Siddharth Rout]

To write to the registry we will use the SaveSetting command. SaveSetting Saves or creates an application entry in the application's entry in the Windows Registry. Visual Basic, by default using GetSetting and SaveSetting allows reading and writing only to the VB and VBA Programs key under HKEY_Current_User\Software.

Syntax

SaveSetting appname, section, key, setting

The SaveSetting statement syntax has these named arguments:

Part Description
appname Required String expression containing the name of the application orproject to which the setting applies.
section Required String expression containing the name of the section where the key setting is being saved.
key Required String expression containing the name of the key setting being saved.
setting Required Expression containing the value that key is being set to.

Lets understand the syntax...
You can compare the registry to a database which has fields and records in it...
The first three arguments of the SaveSetting statement can be compared to fields in a record. The field names just happen to be appname, section, key and setting and we need to simply supply values to this via SaveSetting.

The best thing about the SaveSetting statement is that you can specify any values you want for appname, section and key. However please ensure that you pick something meaningful. The last field "setting" holds the value that we are really interested in. Lets try it with an example which uses the SaveSetting statement to make entries in the Windows registry for the MyApp application.

'~~> Place some settings in the registry.
SaveSetting appname := "MyApp", section := "Startup", key := "Top", setting := 75
'Or
SaveSetting "MyApp","Startup", "Top", 75

What this code does is that it saves the .Top value of your startup form in the Windows Registry.

Once this line of code executes, a 'record' is written to the Windows Registry with these four 'field' values. If you want to check this out for yourself, you can start the Registry Editor again, and search for the value by selecting Edit-Find from the Registry Editor's Menu Bar.