WinReg v4.1.0

High-level C++ Wrapper Around the Low-level Windows Registry C-interface API

by Giovanni Dicanio

The Windows Registry C-interface API is very low-level and hard to use.

I developed some C++ wrappers around this low-level Win32 API, to raise the semantic level, using C++ classes like std::wstring, std::vector, etc. instead of raw C-style buffers and low-level mechanisms.

For example, the REG_MULTI_SZ registry type associated to double-NUL-terminated C-style strings is handled using a much easier higher-level vector<wstring>. My C++ code does the translation between high-level C++ STL-based stuff and the low-level Win32 C-interface API.

Moreover, Win32 error codes are translated to C++ exceptions.

The Win32 registry value types are mapped to C++ higher-level types according the following table:

Win32 Registry Type	C++ Type
`REG_DWORD`	`DWORD`
`REG_QWORD`	`ULONGLONG`
`REG_SZ`	`std::wstring`
`REG_EXPAND_SZ`	`std::wstring`
`REG_MULTI_SZ`	`std::vector<std::wstring>`
`REG_BINARY`	`std::vector<BYTE>`

This code is currently developed using Visual Studio 2019. I have no longer tested the code with previous compilers. The code compiles cleanly at /W4 in both 32-bit and 64-bit builds.

This is a header-only library, implemented in the WinReg.hpp header file.

WinRegTest.cpp contains some demo/test code for the library: check it out for some sample usage.

The library exposes three main classes:

RegKey: a tiny efficient wrapper around raw Win32 HKEY handles
RegException: an exception class to signal error conditions
RegResult: a tiny wrapper around Windows Registry API LONG error codes, returned by some Try methods (like RegKey::TryOpen)

There are many member functions inside the RegKey class, that wrap many parts of the native C-interface Windows Registry API, in a convenient C++ way.

For example, you can simply open a registry key and get registry values with C++ code like this:

RegKey  key{ HKEY_CURRENT_USER, L"SOFTWARE\\SomeKey" };

DWORD   dw = key.GetDwordValue (L"SomeDwordValue");
wstring s  = key.GetStringValue(L"SomeStringValue");

You can also open a registry key using a two-step construction process:

RegKey key{};
key.Open(HKEY_CURRENT_USER, L"SOFTWARE\\SomeKey");

The above code will throw an exception on error. If you prefer to check return codes, you can do that as well:

RegKey key;
RegResult result = key.TryOpen(HKEY_CURRENT_USER, L"SOFTWARE\\SomeKey");
if (! result)
{
    //
    // Open failed.
    //
    // You can invoke the RegResult::Code and RegResult::ErrorMessage methods
    // for further details.
    //
    ...
}

You can also enumerate all the values under a given key with simple C++ code like this:

auto values = key.EnumValues();

for (const auto & v : values)
{
    //
    // Process current value:
    //
    //   - v.first  (wstring) is the value name
    //   - v.second (DWORD)   is the value type
    //
    ...
}

In addition, you can also use the RegKey::TryGet...Value methods, that return std::optional instead of throwing on errors:

// RegKey::TryGetDwordValue() returns a std::optional<DWORD>;
// the returned std::optional contains no value on error.

if (auto dw = key.TryGetDwordValue(L"SomeDwordValue"))
{
    // All right: Process the returned value ...
}
else
{
    // The method has failed: The returned std::optional contains no value.   
}

You can take a look at the test code in WinRegTest.cpp for some sample usage.

The library stuff lives under the winreg namespace.

See the WinReg.hpp header for more details and documentation.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this project with some additional features and constructive comments and suggestions.

cdriper/WinReg

WinReg v4.1.0

High-level C++ Wrapper Around the Low-level Windows Registry C-interface API