Preference API in windows when registry is blocked

Question

Hi All,
I have a requirement to save the user preferences of a swing based medical application at the user end and the Preferences API seemed clean to fit the bill.
However after going live, we found that some workstations have been denied user access to the registry. In such cases the entire application seems to fail. Please suggest some way out. It is exteremely important as we have already gone live with the software in place and some doctors may not be able to use the system. For the time being I could start using a properties file as a back up and storing using the random-access file api. Please help......
Thanks in advance,
Zeus

Answer 1

A cursory look at the Preferences.java source leads me to believe that it should be possible to change where the values are stored. This code interrogates the os.name and chooses either the Windows Registry or something else (I assume a file it creates.)
// 3. Use platform-specific system-wide default
String platformFactory =
    System.getProperty("os.name").startsWith("Windows")
    ? "java.util.prefs.WindowsPreferencesFactory"
    : "java.util.prefs.FileSystemPreferencesFactory";
try {
    return (PreferencesFactory)
     Class.forName(platformFactory, false, null).newInstance();
} catch (Exception e) {
    InternalError error = new InternalError(
     "Can't instantiate platform default Preferences factory "
     + platformFactory);
    error.initCause(e);
    throw error;
}You should be able to subclass this class and change so that the Registry isn't used.