How do you change registry setting using VB??

[Rick Okrasinski]

I want to change the way the system formats the date in the registry. If a users setting default to m/d/yy I want to change it to mm/dd/yyyy.


Thanks

Rick

[Chris Eastwood]

Hi


You don't have to get the date format from the registry at all. The Win32 api allows you to get various information from the computers international setup (dateformat, thousand separator, currency symbol etc).


I also wouldn't recommend trying to change the users dateformat on their machine. This could cause all kinds of problems if other programs on their system aren't as good as yours ;-)


I'd recommend obtaining the existing dateformat from the computer and having a routine you call to use your own date format - this ensures that your code is portable to other countries / languages (eg. In europe, we use DD/MM/YY or DD/MM/YYYY, which inside code, we always refer to as YYYY/MM/DD - this ensures that date formats from other countries can always be 'exported' again correctly).



Here's a code snippet.


Place the declares in either a BAS module or in your form (changing private / public as required) :


'

' Locale Constants

'

Public Const LOCALE_SDECIMAL = &HE

Public Const LOCALE_SLONGDATE = &H20

Public Const LOCALE_SSHORTDATE = &H1F

Public Const LOCALE_SCURRENCY = &H14

Public Const LOCALE_STHOUSAND = &HF

Public Const LOCALE_SINTLSYMBOL = &H15

Public Const LOCALE_STIMEFORMAT = &H1003


Public Const LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT As Long = &H400


Public Declare Function GetLocaleInfo Lib "KERNEL32" _

Alias "GetLocaleInfoA" (ByVal lLocale As Long, _

ByVal lLocaleType As Long, ByVal sLCData As String, _

ByVal lBufferLength As Long) As Long


Public Declare Function GetSystemDefaultLangID Lib _

"KERNEL32" () As Integer


Public Declare Function VerLanguageName Lib "KERNEL32" _

Alias "VerLanguageNameA" (ByVal wLang As Long, _

ByVal szLang As String, ByVal nSize As Long) As Long



Now, place the following routine in a BAS module (or wherever you want it) :



Public Function GetDateFormat() As String

'

' This function will return the Locale date format for the system. Note that the

' returned Year is always formatted to 'YYYY' regardless, to ensure compliance with

' Y2k stuff.

'

Dim lBuffLen As Long

Dim sBuffer As String

Dim lResult As Long

Dim sDateFormat As String



On Error GoTo vbErrorHandler



lBuffLen = 128

sBuffer = String$(lBuffLen, vbNullChar)



lResult = GetLocaleInfo(LOCALE_USER_DEFAULT, LOCALE_SSHORTDATE, sBuffer, lBuffLen)



If lResult > 0 Then

sDateFormat = Left$(sBuffer, lResult - 1)

'

' Make sure we always have YYYY format for y2k

'

If InStr(1, sDateFormat, "YYYY", vbTextCompare) = 0 Then

'

' Write your own routine to replace YY with YYYY

' Replace sDateFormat, "YY", "YYYY"

'

End If



GetDateFormat = sDateFormat

Else

GetDateFormat = "DD/MM/YYYY"

End If

Exit Function


vbErrorHandler:

Err.Raise Err.Number, "GetDateFormat", Err.Description

End Function


Now, whenever you need to access the systems date format, use something like :


sSysdateFormat = GetDateFormat


or :


dteDate = Format(sDateValueValue, GetDateFormat)


In the GetDateFormat routine, you can apply your own internal format to however you want, ie. MM/DD/YY, M/D/YY etc


Regards


Chris Eastwood


-Zafir

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