Windows uses a database called the Registry to maintain system information about users, hardware, and installed software. NOTE Registry use and the <cfregistry> tag are supported only on the Windows platform. The Registry stores information through a hierarchy of keys and values:
CAUTION The Registry contains system-critical information. Editing the Registry incorrectly may severely damage your system. At the very least, you should back up the Registry data on the server before tinkering. For obvious reasons, you can restrict developer access to <cfregistry> through ColdFusion Administrator. You can use <cfregistry> to query the Registry; it returns a standard query object of keys and values. Use the action attribute with get to retrieve one entry or with getall, as shown here, to retrieve multiple keys and values from the Registry: <!--- Grabbing data from the Registry ---> <cfregistry action="GetAll" branch="HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Macromedia" type="Any" name="reg"> <table border="1"> <tr> <th>Entry</th> <th>Type</th> <th>Value</th> </tr> <cfoutput query="reg"> <tr> <td>#Entry#</td> <td>#Type#</td> <td>#Value#</td> </tr> </cfoutput> </table> TIP In the <cfregistry> result set, if #Type# is a key, then #Value# is an empty string. When you specify TYPE="Any", GetAll returns any binary Registry values. However, the binary value's #Type# variable contains unsupported, and #Value# is blank. The <cfregistry> tag allows you to add, edit, and delete Registry values. You can use the set action to add or update Registry keys and value data. <cfregistry> simply creates the key or value if it does not already exist. You need to specify attributes for branch, the entry to set, the value's type of data, and the value data itself. You can also use <cfregistry> with the delete action to delete Registry keys and values. |