I have XML file that include a next content:
<!--<appcache appCacheType="None" />-->
<appcache appCacheType="SingleClient" defaultExpiration="3600"/>
On installation patch i need to change this content in XML file to:
<appcache appCacheType="None" />
<!--<appcache appCacheType="SingleClient" defaultExpiration="3600"/>-->
What is a better way to do it?
Thanks.
I tried (in vain) to use the MSI Community Extensions for this purpose, but wasn't able to get them up and running.
I ended up using the util:XmlFile-tag from the Util-extension that works flawlessly.
Add the namespace of the Util-extension to your source-file in the Wix-element:
xmlns:util="http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/UtilExtension"
Then use it as sub-element of a related component. In your case you want to delete an attribute and change the value of another one. The following should do the trick, just adjust the XPath in the ElementPath-attribute to the one that matches your tag (in the example it updates the appcache-tag which has an attribute appCacheType with the value SingleClient) and the filekey of the XML-file:
<Component Id="myComponentToUpdateTheXmlFile" ... >
<!-- Removing the defaultExpiration-attribute first -->
<util:XmlFile Id="UpdateAppCacheTag" Action="deleteValue" ElementPath="//appcache[\[]#appCacheType='SingleClient'[\]]/#defaultExpiration" File="[#MyConfigFile.xml]" SelectionLanguage="XPath" Sequence="1" Name="defaultExpiration" />
<!-- Now updating the value -->
<util:XmlFile Id="UpdateAppCacheTag" Action="setValue" ElementPath="//appcache[\[]#appCacheType='SingleClient'[\]]/#appCacheType" File="[#MyConfigFile.xml]" SelectionLanguage="XPath" Sequence="2" Value="None" />
</Component>
Be sure to add the Util-extension also on the commandline when invoking candle and light:
<candle or light command line> ... <parameters> ... -ext <PathToWiXExtensions>\WixUtilExtension.dll
If you want to do this only during e.g. patching, then add the appropriate condition for this component.
I am trying to edit an XML file with Wix. I am using the WixUtilExtension bundled with Wix 3.7. The xml file is a settings file created in Visual Studio 2010 for a C# application. In this file, I am using an element which is used to store multiple string values in an array. This is the content of the unaltered settings file:
<configuration>
<applicationSettings>
<AppName.Properties.Settings>
<setting name="StringArray" serializeAs="Xml">
<value>
<ArrayOfString xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
</ArrayOfString>
</value>
</setting>
</AppName.Properties.Settings>
</applicationSettings>
</configuration>
I want to add <string> elements to the <ArrayOfString> element in this file. One way to do this is by using an <XmlConfig> element from the wix/UtilExtension namespace. I have added this element to the component which holds the config file like this:
<Component Id="ProductComponent" Guid="$(var.ConfigGuid)">
<File Source="SettingsFile.exe.config" KeyPath="yes" Id="FILE_config" />
<util:XmlConfig
Name="string"
Value="My value"
File="[INSTALLFOLDER]SettingsFile.exe.config"
Id="String1"
On="install"
Action="create"
Node="element"
ElementPath="/configuration/applicationSettings/AppName.Properties.Settings/setting[\[]#name='StringArray'[\]]/value/ArrayOfString"
Sequence="100"
/>
</Component>
This results in the addition of one <string> element to the <ArrayOfString> element. To add another <string> element to the settings file, another XmlConfig element has to be added to the <Component> element of the setup project with a different Id attribute and a higher value for the Sequence attribute like this:
<util:XmlConfig
Name="string"
Value="My second value"
File="[INSTALLFOLDER]SettingsFile.exe.config"
Id="String2"
On="install"
Action="create"
Node="element"
ElementPath="/configuration/applicationSettings/AppName.Properties.Settings/setting[\[]#name='StringArray'[\]]/value/ArrayOfString"
Sequence="101"
/>
After installation of the msi, the <ArrayOfString> element in the settings file looks like this:
<ArrayOfString xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<string>My value</string><string>My second value</string></ArrayOfString>
I have found out that it is possible to set the Value attribute of an <XmlConfig> attribute to the value of a property like this:
<Property Id="STRING1VALUE" Value="My value" />
<util:XmlConfig Value="[STRING1VALUE]" ... />
This is good. I would like the user to be able to add multiple values in the installation process dynamically so that a variable amount of <string> elements can be added to the settings file.
My first approach was to use a <?foreach?> statement like this:
<?define values="My value;My second value"?>
<?foreach value in $(var.values)?>
<util:XmlConfig
Name="string"
Value="$(var.value)"
File="[INSTALLFOLDER]SettingsFile.exe.config"
Id="String$(var.value)"
On="install"
Action="create"
Node="element"
ElementPath="/configuration/applicationSettings/AppName.Properties.Settings/setting[\[]#name='StringArray'[\]]/value/ArrayOfString"
Sequence="101"
/>
<?endforeach?>
There are a few problems with this approach:
The foreach statement uses a preprocessor variable which cannot be set to the value of a property.
The value of the Sequence attribute stays the same.
I would like the user to store the values for the string elements in a Property which separates the values by semicolons and then parse them in a foreach statement like this:
<Property Id="VALUES" Value="My value;My second value" />
<?foreach value in [VALUES]?>
<util:XmlConfig
Name="string"
Value="$(var.value)"
File="[INSTALLFOLDER]SettingsFile.exe.config"
Id="String$(var.value)"
On="install"
Action="create"
Node="element"
ElementPath="/configuration/applicationSettings/AppName.Properties.Settings/setting[\[]#name='StringArray'[\]]/value/ArrayOfString"
Sequence="101"
/>
<?endforeach?>
This throws the following error:
The util:XmlConfig/#Id attribute's value, 'String[VALUES]', is not a legal identifier.
Identifiers may contain ASCII characters A-Z, a-z, digits, underscores (_), or periods (.).
Every identifier must begin with either a letter or an underscore.
Is there any way I can create a variable amount of elements with the XmlFile or the XmlConfig element? Is the only solution to this problem a CustomAction?
Based on Rob's answer, here is my new approach to adding multiple elements to an XML config file with Wix. I did not want to write C++ code, that is why I used DTF in my CustomAction.
I am going to describe how to turn a string containing multiple elements using a delimiter into multiple XML elements.
First there needs to be a property in the setup file containing the delimited string.
<Property Id="STRINGARRAY" Value="string1;string2;string3" />
This property could be populated by the user in a dialog, of course.
Next, a CustomAction has to be written. To make use of the DTF, a reference to the Microsoft.Deployment.WindowsInstaller.dll has to be added to the C# CustomAction project. The namespace Microsoft.Deployment.WindowsInstaller should be included with a using directive in that project. My CustomAction looks like this:
[CustomAction]
public static ActionResult Insert(Session session)
{
string strings = session["STRINGARRAY"];
string[] stringArray = strings.Split(';');
Database db = session.Database;
View view = db.OpenView("select * from `XmlConfig`");
string xpath = "/configuration/applicationSettings/AppName.Properties.Settings/setting[\\[]#name='StringArray'[\\]]/value/ArrayOfString";
for (int i = 0; i < stringArray.Length; i++)
{
string id = String.Format("String{0}", i);
int sequence = 100 + i;
string value = stringArray[i].Trim();
Record rec = new Record(
id,
"[INSTALLFOLDER]SettingsFile.exe.config",
xpath,
null,
"string",
value,
273,
"ProductComponent",
sequence);
view.InsertTemporary(rec);
}
db.Close();
return ActionResult.Success;
}
Here, at first the Property StringArray is read into a local variable which is converted to a string array. The following line establishes a connection to the current database used by the installer. A handle on the table XmlConfig is created, which is the table where the XML elements are added to. To insert the right values into that table, it is best to create an installer file which contains such a table and then take a look at that table in an editor like orca or InstEd.
In the xpath, backslashes have to be escaped by using double backslashes. The id variable holds the name of the temporary record, using a simple string and a number works flawlessly. The sequence has to be incremented for each element. I could not find any documentation on the values of the flags column, but I have found out that its value is set to 273 for elements that are created and 289 for elements that get deleted.
Once the record is filled with the correct values, it gets added to the XmlConfig table by using the InsertTemporary method of the view object. This is done for each element found in the delimited string.
A problem I have come across is that this CustomAction fails, if the XmlConfig table does not exist. To counter this problem I have added the following code to the setup file, which adds an element to the XML file and immediately deletes that element. I guess there could be a cleaner solution, but this was the easiest one for me.
<util:XmlConfig
Name="string"
Value="Dummy"
File="[INSTALLFOLDER]SettingsFile.exe.config"
Id="DummyEntry"
On="install"
Action="create"
Node="element"
ElementPath="/configuration/applicationSettings/AppName.Properties.Settings/setting[\[]#name='StringArray'[\]]/value/ArrayOfString"
Sequence="1" />
<util:XmlConfig
On="install"
Action="delete"
Id="DeleteDummyEntry"
Node="element"
File="[INSTALLFOLDER]SettingsFile.exe.config"
VerifyPath="/configuration/applicationSettings/AppName.Properties.Settings/setting[\[]#name='StringArray'[\]]/value/ArrayOfString/string"
ElementPath="/configuration/applicationSettings/AppName.Properties.Settings/setting[\[]#name='StringArray'[\]]/value/ArrayOfString"
Sequence="2" />
Finally, the CustomAction has to be added to the setup project. By adding a reference to the CustomAction project in the setup project, the location of the binary can be specified like this:
<Binary Id="XmlCustomActionDLL" SourceFile="$(var.XmlCustomAction.TargetDir)XmlCustomAction.CA.dll" />
The CustomAction has to be executed immediately, otherwise it won't be able to access the session variable:
<CustomAction Id="CA_XmlCustomAction" BinaryKey="XmlCustomActionDLL" DllEntry="Insert" Execute="immediate" Return="check" />
<InstallExecuteSequence>
<Custom Action="CA_XmlCustomAction" Before="RemoveRegistryValues" />
</InstallExecuteSequence>
To determine the right position for the CustomAction in the installation sequence, I relied on this article by Bob Arnson.
Yes, this is possible but if you want to have this determined at install time then the preprocessor is not an option. The preprocessor executes during the build process.
To get what you want, you'll need to write another custom action that takes the arbitrarily long set of user data and adds temporary rows to the XmlConfig table. The WcaAddTempRecord() function in src\ca\wcautil\wcawrap.cpp can do the work. The src\ca\wixca\dll\RemoveFoldersEx.cpp is a pretty good example of using WcaAddTempRecord() to add rows to the RemoveFile table. You'll want to do similarly.
One of my goals in creating the bootstrap project is to set a default log location. I would like the location to be based on the local app data folder. I cannot figure out how to reference the builtin Burn variable LocalAppDataFolder. I have found information about how to reference these variables in code, but not in the xml.
The reference to the property looks like this:
<MsiPackage SourceFile="MyInstaller.msi" LogPathVariable="[LogLocation]" />
The property is set like this:
<Variable Name="LogLocation" Value="[LocalAppDataFolder]MyLogFolder\Setup" Type="string"/>
The log output shows:
Initializing string variable 'LogLocation' to value
'[LocalAppDataFolder]MyLogFolder\Setup'
What am I missing to resolve [LocalAppDataFolder] ?
thanks in advance.
It's normal for the log output to show the un-formatted value, so that part looks correct. I think what you are missing is LogPathVariable should be specified without the brackets.
<MsiPackage SourceFile="MyInstaller.msi" LogPathVariable="LogLocation" />
I need to use the percentage char within the value attribute of the XmlFile element to configure path of log4net rolling file appender while application is installed.
Target is to get log4net configured like this
<appender name="RollingFileAppender" type="log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender">
<file type="log4net.Util.PatternString" value="Log_[%processid].log" />
...
</appender>
The base wix code looks like this:
<util:XmlFile
Id="RollingFileAppenderLogPath"
File="[INSTALLLOCATION]log4net.config" Action="setValue" Permanent="yes"
ElementPath="/log4net/appender[\[]#name='RollingFileAppender'[\]]/file" Name="value"
Value="[LOGPATH]Log_[%processid].log"/>
I've tried some various replacements for [ ] and % like entities ([, ] and %), doubling, tripling, quadrupling but the value is always mentioned as environment variable or causes ICE03: Invalid string format.
The replacement result looks like this:
<file type="log4net.Util.PatternString" value="<inserted LOGPATH>Log_.log"/>
Is there a way to get [%processid] forced as string to get it inserted as intended?
Think I found the solution: the problem is with the square brackets!
If you open the WIX Documentation and navigate to the "XmlFile Element", on the "Value" property it reads:
The value to be written. See the Formatted topic for information how to escape square brackets in the value.
So, just ckeck the link above and alter the text, escaping the square brackets and all should work fine! :)
I would like to install a feature according to the brand.
So in my brand.wxi I defined:
<?define brand.FeatureLevel = 1 ?>
And in my wxs I wrote:
<Feature Id="FF" Title="FF" Level="$(var.brand.FeatureLevel)">
<ComponentRef Id="..." />
<ComponentRef Id="..." />
</Feature>
This definition works fine (wheather I've placed 0 or 1 as FeatureLevel).
My only problem is a warning I get at compilation time:
The 'Level' attribute is invalid - The value '$(var.brand.FeatureLevel)' is invalid according to its datatype 'http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema:integer' - The string '$(var.brand.FeatureLevel)' is not a valid Integer value.
Is there a way to fix this warning?
Can I define integer variable? I couldn't find a way...
You can safely ignore this warning. It just points your attention that this preprocessor variable must evaluate to integer. Otherwise, if you modify brand.FeatureLevel to a letter in the sample above, it will throw an error and simply won't compile.