Can a web application access and modify the Windows registry?
I've been writing desktop apps in C # for some time now, but I'm getting increasingly frustrated that not everyone has .NET 2 or higher. I have no way to upgrade my systems to meet my needs. My apps are basically utilities that work alongside the main program I'm working for. They gain access to the file system and registry. As a relatively newbie to programming in general, I was wondering if these tools would be moved around the web to solve some of my problems. But I have no idea if web applications can access these parts of Windows. I was thinking of writing these web applications in Rails or ASP.NET. So my question is this. Can a web application access and modify the registry and Windows file system?
Thank.
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No, "web applications" like asp.net or rails only run on the server and just pass the html to the client. So all the client code can do is that the jscript can run in the browser sandbox, that is, without file access or registry access.
However, you can install activex on a client computer that gets Full Control, but the user must agree to install it as a security risk.
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Writing apps as web apps instead (and Rails is cool to use) is a good option - your users don't need to install anything, updates are easy to do, and dependencies are no longer a problem.
However, now you need to start re-archiving your apps so they don't have to write anything to the client other than a cookie (which is stored in the browser). If you can do that, then the transition to webapp will be big.
If you cannot, my advice is to learn the same language your branded application is written in. When you do this, the enterprise application will take care of these dependencies, and you just need to offer your utilities along with the application, perhaps even in the installer, or just to copy files to a subdirectory. If you are thinking of learning Ruby, then learning a corporate language will be just as difficult (only you can reuse a lot of the code used in the main application)
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No, a traditional asp.net application cannot access the file system or registry in a window box. Simply put, because it doesn't actually run on the client machine. Instead, it runs on a server where it has no access to the local machine.
There may be parts of the application that run on the client machine. For example, browser based applications. However, this will require the 2.0 environment installed on the client machine, which will take you back to box # 1.
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I am assuming that the desktop application used by your company uses the registry to store workstation / user state (state) data.
Moving to a web application doesn't mean storing state data is no longer possible, just consider it by including a table in your database that can be used to persist the same (states) data. The registry no longer exists.
Another pro is that by going to a fully web application, you never have to worry about your end users, because the code runs on the server, all enduser gets is the output in html: -D.
The only thing to keep in mind is cross browser compatibility, don't make an app that only works in IE, it should look and work the same in all major browsers.
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