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

[Siddharth Rout]

Now that we have the MyApp's startup form's .Top value saved in the Windows Registry, we need to access the value whenever our program starts up. We'll use the Visual Basic GetSetting function to read this value from the Windows Registry, and a good place to execute that function is in the Load Event Procedure of the form. Before I show you that code, let me show you the format for the GetSetting function.

Syntax

GetSetting(appname, section, key[, default])

The GetSetting function syntax has thesenamed arguments:

Part Description
appname Required String expression containing the name of the application or project whose key setting is requested.
section Required String expression containing the name of the section where the key setting is found.
key Required String expression containing the name of the key setting to return.
default Optional Expression containing the value to return if no value is set in the key setting. If omitted, default is assumed to be a zero-length string ("").

As you can see, the first three arguments of the GetSetting function are identical to the SaveSetting statement. The difference lies in the fourth argument. With the SaveSetting Statement, the fourth argument was the value to be written to the Registry. For the GetSetting function, the fourth argument is an optional argument used to specify a default value to be returned in the event that the entry specified cannot be located in the Windows Registry.

Here's the code to place in the Load Event Procedure of the Startup Form. I have inserted 2 message box in the code below so that you can understand how it works...

Private Sub Form_Load()
    '~~> Check what is the current top value
    MsgBox Form1.Top
    '~~> Get value from registry
    Form1.Top = GetSetting("MyApp", "Startup", "Top", 25)
    '~~> Check the new top value
    MsgBox Form1.Top
End Sub