ideas for a auto updating app

[jsong55]

Whenever, user runs it, uses something like URLDownloadToVar to get a JSON with newest version, check current version. Download new exe file reload and delete old?

[mikeyww]

I would go ahead and give it a whirl. It looks like you already know what to do and what functions to use. Post your script and your other file if you get stuck.

[jsong55]

Kind of was looking forward to someone to point me to an existing library. But I couldn't find one on the forum.

[boiler]

In case you don’t have this yet:

Code: Select all

URLDownloadToVar(url) {
	whr := ComObject('WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1')
	whr.Open('GET', url)
	whr.Send()
	whr.WaitForResponse()
	return whr.ResponseText
}

And I’ve seen that you already use thqby’s JSON library. So I guess you’re looking for everything put together. It’s really straightforward. No library needed. Just do those things as you described. It’s just a handful of lines.

I happen to have been working on this very thing. One problem I ran into was replacing the existing file while it’s running (I need it to be a compiled .exe file), and it wouldn’t allow that because the .exe file is in use. I don’t think it would do that with a .ahk file, so if that’s what you’re using, it should not be an issue. In my case, I will just need to launch another .exe, exit the current one, and have the other .exe replace the first one and relaunch it.

[jsong55]

@boiler
We would want to let the user choose whether to update the app and also to revert to a previous version... If needed.

So the installer exe will need to ask the user if they wish to update and download the new version if so.

I would use the command line 7z app to extract the password protected download so no one monitoring the network can sniff the files

Thinking it through before even writing a line

[jsong55]

It ended up less straight forward than a few lines of code... But I pushed to production.

Main App needs to write version number to text file, then call updater.
Updater checks version by downloading json and prompts user. If current version = exit
If yes proceed else exit.
Then processclose main app and downloads new, unpacks, deletes package run new app