General

wodAppUpdate expects to retrieve configuration file from your server as textual file. You should take few minutes to create that file. It's really easy - just follow these steps, but you can also copy/paste sections from below directly to your new file to get started quickly! Use UpdSqueze to quickly get [File] section created from files!

1. Make sure your configuration file starts with the signature! If it doesn't, wodAppUpdate will ignore the file completely

2. Add [File] section for each file you want to be able to be updated

Typically, it will look like this:

There can be as many [File] or [Message] sections as you wish, but only one [Global] section. Just make sure there are no empty lines inside the section!

[Global] section can have these lines:
 

Name		Description
	AutoRestart	Determines if application is auto-started (default value) after update is made.
	CmdAfter	Determines if some command is executed after all files are replaced. For example, you can start some service here.
	CmdBefore	Determines if some command is executed before any of files are replaced. For example, you can stop some service here.
	CmdLine	Holds full command line, with any arguments, of file to start after files are replaced. Besides typical %VARIABLES% as described below for Path entry, you can also specify %APP% value which holds full path to EXE filename that is currently running.
	RequireAdmin	Overrides RequireAdmin property - if you want to force admin privileges remotely. You can also force nonadmin privileges, property value is overridden if this line exists.

Following lines are supported in [File] section:
 

Name		Description
	CmdAfter	Determines if some command is executed after file is replaced. For example, register the COM service manually.
	CmdBefore	Determines if some command is executed before file is replaced. For example, you can unregister the COM service manually.
	Compressed	Determines if file kept online is compressed or not. It will be decompressed on the fly during download. Should be used with UpdSqueze.
	Date (or CreationDate)	This is creation date of the file, in a format YYYYMMDDhhmmss. You should set it if you plan to use ReplaceRule property set to ReplaceIfDate value
	DateFormat	When set to "utc" then wodAppUpdate expects that all dates for this file is expressed in UTC timezone. Any other setting is ignored.
	Name	Defines name of the file, as will be seen in UpdFile.Name property
	MD5	Holds base64 encoded MD5 hash of the file in uncompressed form.
	ModificationDate	This is modification date of the file, in a format YYYYMMDDhhmmss. You should set it if you plan to use ReplaceRule property set to ReplaceIfModificationDate value
	Path	Defines full destination path where file is installed. You can use also environment constants such as %USERPROFILE%, %APPDIR%, %WINDOWS%, %SYSTEM%, etc.., but also shell folders such as %FILE% (for the file being updated), %APPDATA%,%DESKTOP%, etc... (just make sure you put them inside % %). This cannot be relative path - you must use absolute full path, with the help of above constants if neccessary! You should not specify filename here. Only the path; Please note that if you change path of the OCX/DLL that is already on the system, it is possible that wodAppUpdate will not restart the app - since it doesn't have to.. It didn't replace locked files, it copied same file (but with new version) to new place and system didn't complain.
	Register	Determines if file should be registered as COM server or not. If set to True, wodAppUpdate will call DllRegisterServer exported function from the file.
	Size	Defines size of the file. If not specified, wodAppUpdate will try to retrieve information from the server. If it fails, it will still work but wodAppUpdate will not be able to show correct progress information during the download.
	UncompressedSize	Holds original uncompressed file size. wodAppUpdate does not use this information. However, you can provide it and your application can obtain it through File.UncompressedSize property.
	URL	This is full path of the file so that wodAppUpdate can download it. If name ends with '.gz' then wodAppUpdate assumes it is compressed using UpdSqueze file and will decompress it after download
	Version	Holds version info. If wodAppUpdate has same file with lower version, if will perform the replacement.

3. You can also add one or more [Message] sections. wodAppUpdate will put each such section into separate UpdMessage object

4. If your configuration file gets to big you can use UpdSqueze on it, and upload in such compressed form. wodAppUpdate recognize such files too. Just do

UpdSqueze update.cfg update_compressed.cfg

and upload new file on the server
 

Making configuration file in PHP

Just to give you example, if you make this file in PHP it may be wise to make clients know they should not cache the information.. New wodAppUpdate will ignore local cache, but older ones may still use it.. Put code like this in your 'update.php' file:

Using UpdSqueze

You will find UpdSqueze binary in the installation. This application is used to compress your files so wodAppUpdate downloads are faster, and it will create [File] section for the file which you can almost paste to configuration script directly - just change URL line so it contains full path to the file.

UpdSqueze uses ZLIB library to quickly compress the file. You should use it like this:

UpdSqueze [-mod] [-utc] [-url=...] orgfile destfile

-mod includes ModificationDate too in the configuration
-utc converts all dates to UTC timezone
-url=http://some.url.com/something causes UpdSqueze to put that value exactly as is in [URL] line

for example, try

UpdSqueze c:\Windows\Notepad.exe c:\Notepad.exe.gz

as a result, UpdSqueze will create c:\Notepad.exe.gz, but will also dump this information:

[File]
Name=Notepad.exe
Size=34783
UncompressedSize=193536
Version=5.1.2600.2180
Compressed=1
URL=Notepad.exe.gz

Do not forget to upload Notepad.exe.gz to your server together with configuration script!