I am working on a project that requires me to deploy files to Firefox’s plugins directory.  The biggest challenge was finding the location of this directory.  People can have multiple versions of Firefox and may change the default install location.  Since the project targets Windows machines a coworker recommended reading the registry.  The idea sounded good, but it had been a while since I had cracked C++ (let alone Visual C++).  So I took to the web for some examples.  I came across this (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms235431.aspx) on Microsoft’s web site.   It is a list of sample code for various Visual C++ tasks.  It helped me throw this together.  Below is source for a program that will write out every installed version of Firefox along with the location of the plugins directory.  Enjoy….


// registry_read.cpp
// compile with: /clr
using namespace System;
using namespace Microsoft::Win32;

int main( )
{

RegistryKey^ rk = nullptr;
rk = Registry::LocalMachine->OpenSubKey(“SOFTWARE”)->OpenSubKey(“Mozilla”);
array^subKeyNames = rk->GetSubKeyNames();

for ( int i = 0; i < subKeyNames->Length; i++ )
{
RegistryKey ^ tempKey = rk->OpenSubKey( subKeyNames[ i ] );
RegistryKey ^ extensionKey = tempKey->OpenSubKey( “extensions” );
if (extensionKey!=nullptr)
{
Console::WriteLine( “\nFound {0} here is the plugins dir {1}.”, tempKey->Name, extensionKey->GetValue( “Plugins” )->ToString() );
}

}

return 0;
}