WIX: property value lost between installUISequence and installExecuteSequence

Question

Hi there,

I'm facing an issue with my wix installer.

I have a custom dialog that contains an edit control linked to a property.

At runtime if I change the value in the edit control I see from the log that the property is properly updated with that new value. But it seems that when the installUISequence ends the property is reset to its default value.

Which is annoying because I cannot use the user sumitted value in a custom action part of the installExecuteSequence.

Here is an extract of the wxs script I use:

    <UI>
    <Dialog Id="select_list" Width="370" Height="270" Title="Select license and list files">
        <Control Id="BannerBitmap" Type="Bitmap" X="0" Y="0" Width="370" Height="44" TabSkip="no" Text="UIBannerBmp" />
        <Control Id="BannerLine" Type="Line" X="0" Y="45" Width="370" Height="0" />
        <Control Id="BottomLine" Type="Line" X="0" Y="234" Width="370" Height="0" />
        <Control Type="Edit" Id="list" Width="211" Height="15" X="128" Y="128" Property="pListFile" />
        <Control Type="Text" Id="static_list" Width="78" Height="17" X="41" Y="154" Text="list file" />
        <Control Type="PushButton" Id="next" Width="50" Height="17" X="232" Y="244" Text="Next &gt;">
            <Publish Event="EndDialog" Value="Return">1</Publish>
        </Control>
        <Control Type="PushButton" Id="cancel" Width="50" Height="17" X="296" Y="244" Text="Cancel">
            <Publish Event="SpawnDialog" Value="CancelDlg">1</Publish>
        </Control>
        <Control Type="Text" Id="desc" Width="348" Height="16" X="8" Y="90" Text="Please set the path of the the list file" />
    </Dialog>
    <InstallUISequence>
        <Show Dialog="select_list" After="WelcomeEulaDlg">NOT installed</Show>
    </InstallUISequence>
</UI>
<CustomAction Id="InstallService" ExeCommand="[bin]prog.exe -f install.cl '[pListFile]'" Execute="immediate" Return="check" Directory="bin" />
<InstallExecuteSequence>
    <Custom Action="InstallService" After="InstallFinalize">REMOVE=""</Custom>
</InstallExecuteSequence>
<CustomActionRef Id="InstallService" />
<Property Id="pListFile" Value="c:\" />

I must not be the right way to exchange information between the two sequences.

Does anyone sees a way to do that ?

sylvain

Answer 1

You need to mark the Property "Secure" for it to pass from the client-side (InstallUISequence) to server-side (InstallExecuteSequence). To do that you need to make the Property "public" (ALL CAPS) and secure. Something like so:

<Property Id="PLISTFILE" Secure="yes"/>

You don't need to give it a value unless you want something to show up by in your UI by default.