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Pack data files with an application in c#

So I want to create a C# application that can be transmitted to users which can then run an "exe" file copying the data files. Therefore, the application should contain at least to things:
The "exe" file
The files containing the data
The data in the application will be in most cases a directory with files and subfolders. My concern is how to store this data. I was thinking about storing the data in ".bin" files while being able to read the data with the exe file and place the files/folders in the correct structure, but I don't know exactly how would I do that with files and folders. Does anyone have any suggestions ? Is there a better way? Do you have any recommended reads ?
Thanks!

When you compile in either debug or release mode, there will be an .exe file in the bin/debug or bin/release folder for your project together with all the project files. You can move that to whatever machine with the .NET framework installed and run the .exe.
If you want to make an actualy executable, that's more difficult to do. Check out this post for more inspiration on that.

If your build is meant for distribution, better compile it on Release mode.
You will find the assemblies on your project_folder/bin/Release.
You may want to copy all contents in the release folder by compressing it, or better yet, using an installer compilation tool, like InnoSetup - http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php/, that is free and will do your application installer just fine.

Problems Unzipping and Re-zipping an XAP file during installation to Modify a Config File

I have an interesting dilemma to which, I hope, someone may have an answer. My company has a very complex web application which we deliver to our clients via an InstallShield multi-instance installer package. The application is written in ASP.NET MVC3 (using the Web Forms View Engine), C# 4.0, and Silverlight. It is the Silverlight component of the app with which we are having problems during installation.
Many of our clients wish to install our web app in what we refer to as “mixed-binding mode”. This may not be the correct terminology. What I mean to say is that the client will install the web app on a web server that is internal to the client’s firewalls and expose it to the web via a proxy server in the DMZ. In this way, everything internal to the firewall will resolve as HTTP, while every external request will resolve as HTTPS.
This does not pose a problem to most of the web application during installation because it will be running inside the firewall and will ALWAYS be HTTP when the app is installed in “mixed-binding mode”. This is not the case with the Silverlight component. Because it runs in the end-user’s browser process space, it is external to the proxy and firewall and must resolve via HTTPS.
The Silverlight files are in the XAP file. Within the XAP file, we have a configuration file (in XML format) that must be modified based on the binding mode of the web application (HTTP, HTTPS, or MIXED). As we all know, XAP files are simply Zip files, so theoretically all that is needed to edit a file contained in the XAP is to rename it from “.xap” to “.zip” and use any zip compatible utility or library component to extract the configuration file, edit it by some manual or automatic means, and then use the same zip component to re-archive the modified file back into the XAP file.
“Therein lies the rub!” This must take place automatically within the InstallShield Basic MSI process. At first we tried using an InstallShield Managed Code Custom Action using the DotNetZip library; however, DotNetZip seems to have an incompatibility with InstallShield. Every time InstallShield launches the Custom action, the installer would throw a InstallShield 1603 error the moment the custom action tried to execute the first DotNetZip command. (Yes we did rename the XAP file from “.xap” to “.zip” prior to trying to unzip the file.) We encountered the same problem with SharpZipLib.
Next, we dropped down to a lower level algorithm using the Shell32 library. We knew there would be timing considerations to take into account using this method since Shell32 processes run in a separate thread so we built wait states into the process, as shown below:
//Extract the config file from the .zip archive
Shell32.Shell shell = new Shell32.Shell();
string extractedFolderPath = tempZipFileName.Substring(0, tempZipFileName.Length - 4) + "\";
if (Directory.Exists(extractedFolderPath))
Directory.Delete(extractedFolderPath, true);
Directory.CreateDirectory(extractedFolderPath);
//Folder name will have the file extension removed.
Shell32.Folder output = shell.NameSpace(extractedFolderPath);
Shell32.Folder input = shell.NameSpace(tempZipFileName);
foreach (FolderItem F in input.Items())
{
string name = F.Name;
//We only extract the config file
if (name.Equals(CFG_FILE))
{
output.MoveHere(F, 4);
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(LONG_TIMEOUT);
}
}
//You have to sleep some time here,
// because the shell32 runs in a separate thread.
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(MED_TIMEOUT);
This seemed to work the “majority” of the time.
NOTE: the use of the word “majority” above. The process works inconsistently on a fast server, whereas it works consistently on a slower machine. Don’t ask me why, my math professors always taught me that a second is a second (in this Universe at least).
We have even tried this with a PowerShell script. In this case, we are able to extract the configuration file and rename it in the target folder to which it was extracted; however, everything we have tried to do copy the renamed file back to the ZIP archive has failed. This is very unusual since we added a second call to push the target folder and all its children into the Zip archive and that works just fine (See the code reference below)!
#Extract_XAP.ps1
#===============
$shell=new-object -com shell.application
#Establish Current Location as Current Location
$CurrentLocation=get-location
#Determine the path of the $CurrentLocation
$CurrentPath=$CurrentLocation.path
#Create a namespace using the $CurrentPath
$Location=$shell.namespace($CurrentPath)
#Rename the XAP File to a ZIP file for extraction will work.
Get-ChildItem *.xap|Rename-Item -NewName {
$_.Name -replace "xap","zip"
}
#Create a ChildItem object using the ZIP file.
$ZipFile = get-childitem SunGard.OmniWA.WebAdmin.zip
#Insure the ZIP File is not readonly
(dir $ZipFile).IsReadOnly = $false
#Create a shell namespace for the ZIP Folder within the ZIP File.
$ZipFolder = $shell.namespace($ZipFile.fullname)
\Iterate through the ZIP Items in the ZIP Folder
foreach ($CurFile in $ZipFolder.items())
{
if ($CurFile.name -eq "ServiceReferences.ClientConfig")
{
#Current item's name matches the file we want to extract,
# so copy it from the ZIP Folder to the Current $Location.
$Location.Copyhere($CurFile)
#Wait briefly to insure process stays in sync
Start-sleep -milliseconds 1000
#Change the extention to the extracted file, so we can tell it from the original when we
# insert it back to the ZIP Folder.
Get-ChildItem *.ClientConfig|Rename-Item -NewName {
$_.Name -replace "ClientConfig","ClientConfig_Test"
}
#Create an object containing the extracted file.
$ClientConfigFile = get-childitem ServiceReferences.ClientConfig_Test
#Wait briefly to insure process stays in sync
Start-sleep -milliseconds 2000
#No need to search further
break
}
}
#For some reason this WILL not copy the renamed file back
# into the ZipFolder, even though it should (see below)!
$ZipFolder.CopyHere($ClientConfigFile)
#For some reason copying the entire current directory
# works just fine! Go figure!
$ZipFolder.CopyHere($Location)
#I hoped this would work, but it doesn't????
$ZipFolder.Close
write-output "renaming to the original extension"
#Rename ZIP file back to a XAP file, so Silverlight can use it.
Get-ChildItem *.zip|Rename-Item -NewName {
$_.Name -replace "zip","xap"
}
This shouldn’t be this hard to do. Somebody has to have done something like this before! I mean any complex web installation is going to need an automated install process and is going to have to be eventually installed using proxies and DMZ’s.
Any assistance would be appreciated. Here are the specifications we must follow:
Use InstallShield Basic MSI as the installer.
Any InstallShield Custom Action must be written in C#.
The XAP file must be modified after the file has been copied to the server by the installer.
Management wants me to stay away from BSD and GNU "free-ware" like
Info-Zip, 7Zip, et.al.
Ken Jinks
Senior Web Developer
Sungard Omni Wealth Services
Birmingham AL

Option 2
Address the 1603 error.
A note I found on this page says:
Verify the correct prototype syntax for entry-point function
declarations of InstallScript custom actions, if any have been
included in the setup.
An example of a correct prototype is: export prototype MyFunction(HWND);
Note: HWND must be specifically referenced
in the prototype. All InstallScript functions called via custom
actions must accept a HWND parameter. This parameter is a handle to
the Microsoft Windows Installer (MSI) database.
Option 1 (not an option)
Putting on my pragmatic hat here:
If you only have the two scenarios, e.g. Mixed-binding and "normal", I would suggest simply generating two ZAP files in your project and installing only one, or (my preference) install both and dynamically deciding which ZAP filename to inject into the hosting page at runtime (if you can identify the running mode in your MVC web app).
This keeps the installer simple and does not add much work to have a few shared main files in each of two Silverlight projects connected to the same web project.
You can use a shared TT include file to generate any configs using a mostly shared config template.

O.K. I have finally figured it out using PowerShell. As it turns out, I could not get any of the CopyHere flags parameter settings to work and CopyHere will not overwrite a file in a zip folder object unless it has been told to do so by the Flags Parameter.
The simplest solution was to change all of the CopyHere methods to MoveHere methods. In that way I was never having to try to overwrite a file and I also never had to delete my working file because it got moved back into the Zip Folder.
Thanks for all of your help.
Ken Jinks

extract APK file contents using .NET tool

I used apktool to extract an APK file contents. But for some reasons I need such a tool written in .NET so I do not need to install the JDK in the server.
Is there such a tool?

No. There is no such a tool. You need to start a Process in C# and run the batch file with the arguments using ProcessStartInfo class

I think in another approach, take the APK file and create a Java program that extracts the info I need such as package name, icon resource etc... and then expose it as COM object and use it in my .NET project.
After deep research we can not extract that info in standard functions in Java, since the only way to extract the info is to unzip the APK via the APKTool and read the manifest from the file system.
Another way but hard is to write your own extractor which involves in deep knowledge in the format of the APK.

how to handle temporary files/folders of VS setup project?

Still learning create MSI installer with VS 2008 for our C# application. We have some batch files to create database and tables, after installation we want to delete it because there are sensitive information on them (username, password, ...). My questions are like those:
where should I put those temporary folders/files? (doesn't matter?)
how to delete them after installation? or how to call batch file from installer? I was able to add a custome action to modify app.config file but call batch file should be a different way. (simpler than having a installer class?)
how to guarantee those files will be deleted even something wrong during the installation?
thanks,

Instead of a batch file, which anyone can open and read, consider compiling the sensitive information and commands into an .exe. If you store information in a file on someone's PC, you cannot guarantee they will not copy and retain it.
Ideally, temporary folders and files get installed in the windows temp directory, but you can also install them in your application directory.
You can't guarantee the install will complete or files will get deleted, but you can do the delete (or whatever) as early as possible so they can't install without that deletion, or you can have your app or some other process complete the deletion after the install.

Validate Download process

"Idea to update the new version of application on client machine"
I have read binary data from DB server using WCF, create a zip file with contents, extract the files and update our application bin folder.
I want to validate the process like if everything is fine then update bin or rollback old file.
Can anybody give me idea to validate this process?
Do we have any check sum idea..

Well if you use SharpZipLib to inflate the zip file, there is a TestArchive method on the ZipFile object that will do an integrity check of the archive, and tell you if it's valid.
Otherwise, you can use MD5 to make a checksum on the remote file, and compare it to the downloaded file to see if the content is the same.

Store on the server/web the most recent version of the project that is online. eg: in a version.txt the value "2.1.0", or query the database if you have access too.
Your application running on clients, will periodically read the contents of the version.txt file, then compared against the inbuilt(self) version number.
If a patch or minor release is detected eg 2.1.123, spins out a second app(updater.exe) that will quietly
do the upgrade,
it shall download the updated(preferred zipped) project from server/web.
Stop any running instances.
Unzipping the content.
Backup existing files(rename)
copy/install the new version of the project,
Start the application (when the app is restarted successfully it will delete its own backup file).
if a major release is detected eg: 3.0.0
notifies the user there is a major upgrade
if user accepts, download the installer
runs a full installer update
Does this help?