Progress on Auto Updater

[taco-man]

As some of you may know i am working on writing a visual basic .net program that downloads the newest versions of the map mod automaticly. I wasnt sure if i could do it or not, but apparently i can. i have gotten past everything i wasnt sure i could do, so i hope to have it finished by next week, however i cant promise that because of school and me possibly getting another job

Newest Image:

[Quib]

If you'd like any help debugging (mostly making sure it works properly on any machine and has consistent results), that's my specialty. Although most of my experience is with C++, C# and Delphi, I've worked with VB.

Also, your source code is obviously your own; if you don't want anyone to see it, that's cool.

I don't have any way of compiling VB code at the moment, but I'm sure I could spot problems (if any) by reading over the code a couple times in a text editor.

I'm really really excited about this. I've got the XML (I'm pretty sure) 100% ready to accept the stuff generated by the EQ2MAP website.

Also, can you spare some details on how this'll work? What directory the user will run the updater from, etc.?

Quib

[taco-man]

here is my plan:
at first it will be run in your custom ui folder (where you want the xml files)

eventually i was hoping to have it run in your eq2 directory and make it read your eq2.ini file and just put the files into whatever directory the eq2.ini file is set up to, and if eq2.ini doesnt exist create it and make a folder for the custom ui directory in the eq2.ini file that it made. depending on how hard this is and how important people think this is will determine when i do this, if i do this.

the way it works is it goes to the webserver, downloads an xml file with all the file names of the maps and their md5 checksums, and then generates md5 checksums for all the files in your custom ui folder that you have that are in the file list. if the checksums dont match or the file does not exist, it downloads that file. It sounds simple but it took me a long time because i dont have much experience with vb .net.

[Quib]

Originally Posted by taco-man

here is my plan:
at first it will be run in your custom ui folder (where you want the xml files)

eventually i was hoping to have it run in your eq2 directory and make it read your eq2.ini file and just put the files into whatever directory the eq2.ini file is set up to, and if eq2.ini doesnt exist create it and make a folder for the custom ui directory in the eq2.ini file that it made. depending on how hard this is and how important people think this is will determine when i do this, if i do this.

the way it works is it goes to the webserver, downloads an xml file with all the file names of the maps and their md5 checksums, and then generates md5 checksums for all the files in your custom ui folder that you have that are in the file list. if the checksums dont match or the file does not exist, it downloads that file. It sounds simple but it took me a long time because i dont have much experience with vb .net.

Awesome, and it sounds like you've covered all the bases on functionality. Personally, I'd suggest staying with running it from their custom UI folder; eventually SOE will fix /loadui and we won't use eq2.ini anymore and some people will have a custom UI folder per character. It'll be a little wasteful, but they'd have a copy of the auto-updater in each of their custom UI folders...
or maybe we can move the eq2map folder to the default UI folder so it's consistent regardless of custom UI folder.

Your thoughts?

Quib

[taco-man]

sounds good to me i always like less work

by the way, you dont happen to know how to check if a file exists or not on a webserver do you? i tried using IO.File.Exists(url) but it didnt work, which is not suprising.

[Deathbane27]

As a user, I'd prefer to have one program copy that checks eq2.ini, and gives a prompt asking if the target folder is correct, with an option to change it. If you get bored.

Putting the eq2map folder in the Default folder... an interesting concept.

[Killarny]

Originally Posted by taco-man

sounds good to me i always like less work

by the way, you dont happen to know how to check if a file exists or not on a webserver do you? i tried using IO.File.Exists(url) but it didnt work, which is not suprising.

If VB can easily parse HTML, you could check for a 404 ... I imagine you'd end up writing a text parsing routine for this, as I doubt VB comes with HTML classes. But, it should be fairly easy to check for a standard 404 result.

[causas]

Originally Posted by taco-man

sounds good to me i always like less work

by the way, you dont happen to know how to check if a file exists or not on a webserver do you? i tried using IO.File.Exists(url) but it didnt work, which is not suprising.

I am not sure if .NET would support this, but if it does use an xmlhttp request(this was done in JavaScript):

xmlhttp.open("HEAD", "URL_TO_CHECK",true);
xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function() {
if (xmlhttp.readyState==4) {
if (xmlhttp.status==200) alert("URL Exists!")
else if (xmlhttp.status==404) alert("URL doesn't exist!")
else alert("Status is "+xmlhttp.status)
}
}
xmlhttp.send(null)

more information can be found here: http://jibbering.com/2002/4/httprequest.html

[Fighter222]

Need help please!

My errors

Unknown Error: Microsoft.VisualBasic
at Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.DoubleType.Parse(String Value, NumberFormatInfo NumberFormat)
at Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.IntegerType.FromString(String Value)
at Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.IntegerType.FromObject(Object Value)
at WindowsApplication7.Form1.DownloadExtras()
at WindowsApplication7.Form1.DoUpdates()
at WindowsApplication7.Form1.Timer3_Tick(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Timer.OnTick(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Timer.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr idEvent, IntPtr dwTime)The currency separator information specified in the NumberFormatInfo is ambiguous for parsing.

Pc works with windows 2000