Update a program setup

Question

Hello,

I haven´t experience in making setup, but i all ready make mine but now i need help because when i made a new version i want that the user double click the short cut and it do teh update if there are any.

The application is in c#.

Could you help??

Thanks in advance

Maria João

Answer 1

Here's how I have implemented an updater program I wrote earlier.

First off, you grab an ini file off of your server. This file will contain information about the latest version and where the setup file is. Getting that file isn't too hard.

                WebClient wc = new WebClient();
                wc.DownloadFile(UrlOfIniContainingLatestVersion, PlacetoSaveIniFile);

I also had it setup to read information from a local ini file to determine the latest version. The better way of doing this would be to read the file version directly, but I don't have the code to do that handy.

Next we do a very simple check to see how the two versions compare and download the update.

            if (LatestVersion > CurrentVersion)
            {
                //Download update.
            }

Downloading the update is just as simple as downloading the original ini. You simply change change the two parameters.

wc.DownloadFile(UrlOfLatestSetupFile, PlaceToSaveSetupFile);

Now that you have the file downloaded, it's a simple matter of running the installer.

System.Diagnostics.Start(PathOfDownloadedSetupFile);

---

If you're not sure how to read an ini file, I found the following class somewhere over at CodeProject

using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Text;

namespace Ini
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Create a New INI file to store or load data
    /// </summary>
    public class IniFile
    {
        public string path;

        [DllImport("kernel32")]
        private static extern long WritePrivateProfileString(string section,
            string key, string val, string filePath);
        [DllImport("kernel32")]
        private static extern int GetPrivateProfileString(string section,
                 string key, string def, StringBuilder retVal,
            int size, string filePath);

        /// <summary>
        /// INIFile Constructor.
        /// </summary>
        /// <PARAM name="INIPath"></PARAM>
        public IniFile(string INIPath)
        {
            path = INIPath;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Write Data to the INI File
        /// </summary>
        /// <PARAM name="Section"></PARAM>
        /// Section name
        /// <PARAM name="Key"></PARAM>
        /// Key Name
        /// <PARAM name="Value"></PARAM>
        /// Value Name
        public void IniWriteValue(string Section, string Key, string Value)
        {
            WritePrivateProfileString(Section, Key, Value, this.path);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Read Data Value From the Ini File
        /// </summary>
        /// <PARAM name="Section"></PARAM>
        /// <PARAM name="Key"></PARAM>
        /// <PARAM name="Path"></PARAM>
        /// <returns></returns>
        public string IniReadValue(string Section, string Key)
        {
            StringBuilder temp = new StringBuilder(255);
            int i = GetPrivateProfileString(Section, Key, "", temp,
                                            255, this.path);
            return temp.ToString();

        }
    }
}

Answer 2

Thanks very much for your answer:) But I forgot to mention that is windows forms

Could you help

Thanks

Maria João

Answer 3

Sounds like you might be able to use ClickOnce