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Example C Program: Registering Physical and System Certificate Stores

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Physical stores may be made more or less permanent members of a system store. When a physical store is a member of a system store, operations on the system store such as finding a certificate will look in all of the physical stores that are registered as members of the system store. A physical store can be removed from membership in a system store by using an unregister function.

This example shows the following tasks and CryptoAPI functions:

This example also demonstrates the creation and deletion of system stores.

// This example uses CertRegisterSystemStore.
#pragma comment(lib, "crypt32.lib")

// Copyright (C) Microsoft.  All rights reserved.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <windows.h>
#include <Wincrypt.h>
#define MY_ENCODING_TYPE  (PKCS_7_ASN_ENCODING | X509_ASN_ENCODING)
void MyHandleError(char *s);

void main()
{


// Declare and initialize variables.

HCERTSTORE hSystemStore;
DWORD dwFlags= CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_CURRENT_USER;
LPCWSTR pvSystemName= L"NEWSTORE";  // For this setting of 
                                    // dwFlags, the store name may 
                                    // be prefixed with a user name.
CERT_PHYSICAL_STORE_INFO PhysicalStoreInfo;
BYTE fResponse  = 'n';

if(CertRegisterSystemStore(
    pvSystemName,
    dwFlags,
    NULL,
    NULL))
  printf("System store %S is registered. \n",pvSystemName);
else
  printf("The system store did not register. \n");


// Open the NEWSTORE as a system store.

if(hSystemStore = CertOpenStore(
   CERT_STORE_PROV_SYSTEM,   // the store provider type
   0,                        // the encoding type is not needed
   NULL,                     // use the default HCRYPTPROV
   CERT_SYSTEM_STORE_CURRENT_USER,
                             // set the store location in a registry
                             // location
   pvSystemName ))           // the store name as a Unicode string
{
     printf("The new store has been opened as a system store.\n");
}
else
{
     printf("The new store was not opened as a system store.\n");
}
if(hSystemStore)
{
    if(CertCloseStore(hSystemStore,0))
    {
        printf("The system store has been closed.\n");
    }
    else
    {
        printf("The system store could not be closed.\n");
    }
}
else
{
   printf("The system store did not need to be closed.\n");
}


// Initialize PhysicalStoreInfo.

PhysicalStoreInfo.cbSize=sizeof(CERT_PHYSICAL_STORE_INFO);
PhysicalStoreInfo.pszOpenStoreProvider=(LPSTR)
    CERT_STORE_PROV_FILENAME;
PhysicalStoreInfo.dwFlags=CERT_PHYSICAL_STORE_ADD_ENABLE_FLAG;


// Replace the path below with one that is appropriate for you.

PhysicalStoreInfo.OpenParameters.pbData = 
    (BYTE *) L"C:\\temp\\mystore";
PhysicalStoreInfo.OpenParameters.cbData = 
    (wcslen((LPWSTR) PhysicalStoreInfo.OpenParameters.pbData) + 1) * 
    sizeof(WCHAR);

PhysicalStoreInfo.dwPriority=1;
PhysicalStoreInfo.dwOpenEncodingType=MY_ENCODING_TYPE;


// Register the physical store.

if(CertRegisterPhysicalStore(
      L"NEWSTORE",
      dwFlags,
      L"TESTOR.STO",
      &PhysicalStoreInfo,
      NULL
      ))
{
       printf("Physical store is registered. \n");
}
else
{
       printf("The physical store was not registered.\n");
}  


//  Next, unregister the store.

printf("Would you like to unregister the %S store? (y/n) "
       ,pvSystemName);
scanf_s("%c",&fResponse);

if(fResponse=='y')
{
   if(CertUnregisterSystemStore(
     pvSystemName,
     dwFlags))
   {
      printf("System store %S has been unregistered.\n"
          ,pvSystemName);
   }
   else
   {
      printf("The system store was not unregistered.\n");
   }
}
}  // end main


//  This example uses the function MyHandleError, a simple error
//  handling function, to print an error message to  
//  the standard error (stderr) file and exit the program. 
//  For most applications, replace this function with one 
//  that does more extensive error reporting.

void MyHandleError(char *s)
{
    fprintf(stderr,"An error occurred in running the program. \n");
    fprintf(stderr,"%s\n",s);
    fprintf(stderr, "Error number %x.\n", GetLastError());
    fprintf(stderr, "Program terminating. \n");
    exit(1);
} // end of MyHandleError