Notes Plugin: Where are Custom User Settings Stored? - plugins

Question

We've developed a custom plugin for Notes 8.5.2. It records a number of custom user preferences. The class that does so is shown below:
import java.util.prefs.Preferences;
/**
* Provides programmatic access to Windows Registry entries for this plug-in.
*/
public class Registry
{
Preferences prefs;
/**
* Initializes a new instance of the Registry class.
*/
public Registry()
{
prefs = Preferences.userNodeForPackage(Registry.class) ;
}
/**
* Gets the value of a registry key.
*
* #param keyName The name of the key to return.
*
* #return A string containing the value of the specified registry key. If a key with the specified name cannot be
* found, the return value is an empty string.
*/
public String GetValue(String keyName)
{
try
{
return prefs.get(keyName, "NA") ;
}
catch(Exception err)
{
return "" ;
}
}
/**
* Sets the value of a registry key.
*
* #param keyName The name of the registry key.
*
* #param keyValue The new value for the registry key.
*/
public void SetValue(String keyName, String keyValue)
{
try
{
prefs.put(keyName, keyValue);
prefs.flush();
}
catch(Exception err)
{
}
}
}
A sample of the code that uses it is as follows:
Registry wr = new Registry();
String setting1 = wr.GetValue("CustomSetting1");
wr.SetValue("CustomSetting1", newValue);
Now, I've scanned the Windows Registry, and these settings do not exist. I've indexed my entire hard disk, and I cannot find these entries in any file.
So, where the heck are these settings being stored?

Answer 1

On Windows the Java Preferences API uses the Registry as it's backing store for the Preferences class. The keys are rooted by package name under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JavaSoft\Prefs.
Your code doesn't specify a package, so it uses the following location by default (tested on Windows Vista and 7):
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JavaSoft\Prefs\<unnamed>
There is an articled titled "Sir, What is Your Preference?" by Ray Djajadinataz at the Sun Developer Network where you can get a little more background on this API with some screen shots showing registry locations.
I wonder if you were searching for the key name, eg CustomSetting1, and not finding it because it is saved as /Custom/Setting1 to note that the C and S are capitalized (see API docs.)