Can a web app access and modify the registry of Windows?

Question

Hello, I've been writing desktop apps in C# for some time now but I'm increasingly getting frustrated with the fact that not everyone has .NET 2 or Higher installed. I don't have the option of upgrading their systems to meet my needs. My apps are mostly utilities that run alongside the main program the company I work for has. They access the file system and the registry. Being relatively new to programming in general, I was wondering if moving these tools to the web would solve some of my problems. But I have no idea if web apps can have access to these parts of Windows. I was thinking of writing these web apps in either Rails or ASP.NET. So my question is this. Can a web app access and modify the registry and file system of Windows?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Nope, "web apps" like asp.net or rails apps run on the server alone and just serve html to the client. So all the client-side code can do is what jscript running in the browser sandbox can do, ie no file access or registry access.

You can however install an activex on the client computer that gets full access, but the user has to agree to install it as it's a security risk.

Answer 2

No, this isn't possible. Web applications cannot modify the registry and/or file system on a user's machine because of the security implications. You would need to develop a Windows app to do these kind of changes. You could always make this tool available for download on your website though.

Answer 3

No, a traditional asp.net application cannot access the file system or registry on the windows box. Simply put because it doesn't actually run on the client machine. Instead it runs on the server where it does not have access to the local machine.

It is possible to have portions of the application which run on the client machine. Browser based applications for instance. However these would require that the 2.0 framework be installed on the customers machine which puts you right back at square #1.

Answer 4

No, you can't do that with a web application. Besides others have already said, a web application run in a browser, not inside an operating system, so all you can do is what browsers allows you to do and not all you want, and browsers doesn't allows you to take control of the host machine.

Answer 5

Writing the apps as Web apps instead (and Rails is cool to use) is a good option - your users don't need to install anything, upgrades are easy to do, and dependancies are no longer a problem.

However, you now need to start re-architecting your apps so they do not need to write anything to the client, except a cookie (that's stored in the browser). If you can do this, then migrating to a webapp will be great.

If you cannot, my advice is to learn the same language that your company's app is written in. Once you do that, the company app will have taken care of the dependencies already and you will just need to offer your utilities alongside the app, perhaps even in the installer, or just to copy the files into a subdirectory. If you're thinking of learning Ruby, then learning the corporate language will be just as difficult (only you'll be able to reuse a lot of code used in the main app)

Answer 6

I'm guessing the desktop app used in your company uses the registry to store workstation / user specific (state)data.

Moving to a web based app does not mean storing state data is no longer possible, just account for it by including a table in your database that can be used to save that same (state)data in. The registry is no longer needed.

Another pro is that by moving to a fully webbased application, you never have to worry about your endusers, because the code is running on the server, all the enduser gets is the output in html :-D.

The only thing to keep in mind is cross browser compatibility, don't create an app that works in IE only for instance, it has to look and work the same in all major browsers.

Answer 7

There are a few products out there, such as Xenocode and VMWare's ThinApp, that allow you to virtualize your app's dependencies to the point where your .NET app can run on a machine without the .NET Framework installed. Just another option from left field.