In this lesson we will cover how to gather information from a user via a popup dialog box, and to how to store and retrieve this data from the registry.

As in the previous tutorial, the goal here is for you to learn how to create an object, add code to it, and be able to edit that code to make changes to the way the object/widget behaves. The code is provided for you to copy/paste, but it would work best if you type in the code, to see how DX "Auto-fills" the info as you type. Its really the best way to see how DX works.

In order to use these Tutorials you will need to purchase DesktopX for $14.95 from Stardock.

Lets get started.

As for the rest of the key, that is open to your desire, for now we want to use \Stardock\DesktopX\Widget\Tutorial6\SavedInfo

This can be done right in the previous code like this:

If x <> "" Then 
  object.text = object.text & vbnewline & x
  Set Sh = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
  Sh.RegWrite "HKCU\SOFTWARE\Stardock\DesktopX\Widget\Tutorial6\SavedInfo", X
  Set Sh = Nothing
End If

This Just adds the value of X into the KEY "Saved Info".
Of course every time you run this it overwrites the info with the next piece of text you put into the INPUTBOX.

It would not look like what our text.object looks like now. So if you want it to match the widget's info with what you are storing in the registry just change the RegWrite line and replace the X with object.text

If we click on the widget, and add the "2nd Line of Text" to it, then we look in the registry we see the following in the KEY:

You can see the KEY at the bottom of the REG Editor, and see the value stored in "SavedInfo".

Now we want to pull that data into another object. So lets make a new TEXT object, put in the text "Click to Restore" (you can save a LOT of time by "right-clicking" on the existing object and hitting "CLONE". This makes a duplicate object with all the same code already in place!)

We want to add a very simple script to this object.

Function Object_OnLButtonUp(x,y,dragged)
  If dragged = False Then
   Set Sh = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
   On Error Resume Next
   X = Sh.RegRead("HKCU\SOFTWARE\Stardock\DesktopX\Widget\Tutorial6\SavedInfo")
   Set Sh = Nothing
   If X <> "" Then object.text = x
  End If
End Function

You will notice about 80% of this is the same. What is different is:

 On Error Resume Next
 --- This is used to keep the program working if the registry entry doesnt exist.

 X = Sh.RegRead("HKCU\SOFTWARE\Stardock\DesktopX\Widget\Tutorial6\SavedInfo")
 --- Pull the data from the KEY and store it in the variable X

 If X <> "" Then object.text = x

 --- In this case we want to make the entire Text object match what we stored
     in the registry key.  But we also want to Make sure that there was
     something in X from the registry.  Thus the "IF".

You could make a lot of modifications to this one, but it has a great base to build from.
An option would be to make a "function" or "SUB" that does the load and store.

Keep in mind that you can read in ANY "KEY" from the registry, so you could easily modify this to pull in the data in the key for say... Who the "Registered Owner" of the pc is

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\RegisteredOwner

There are lots of things you could pull from the reg. and update as well. SO PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE Take care when you write to the registry.