In the office here we have a startup script that runs on the server which will update via copy/paste the software in house if there's a newer version on the server or not. This was simple, easy and fast to implement.
There is now a problem, many of our users are off-site and they use laptops/tables which don't connect to the domain to run the startup scripts - which means that these have to be manually deployed. This was fine for the one user that I've had for a good while. Now that I've got 10 - it's a no go. I've got to figure out a better solution.
Without developing something homegrown, are there any solutions out there that make auto-deploying/updating easier?
Note: This is a winforms app.
Is ClickOnce an option?
There's a lot to read at the link I am pointing you to, but it's really pretty simple. You would have to publish the app to a live web server, though. Something that can be accessed from off the domain. That could pose some security concerns. It's one avenue to explore, though.
Related
I work in a public sector university
I use selenium with C# for automating routine tasks. I have admin rights so I just develop
various win forms apps to do that. But most of my colleagues cant use such apps as they do not
have admin rights. The apps are so useful and time saving that I want it to share with all colleagues
But admin rights is the issue, so please direct me to a solution that can work completely on client side.
Plz also note that I cant create setups and ask networking staff to install it on all PCs as there are
around 150 of them, and also the apps often are updated every couple of months.
PhantomJS worked without requiring admin rights, but it is already paused, as per their official page, so the only hack to my mind is, ask networking staff to install visual studio (with C# setup) on all PCs, this way I can just hand over the apps to all and they can open and run from VS, instead of direct exe, and it will eliminate requiring updating of apps as users will just need to get the latest app folder. A down side is un necessary window of VS and the memory but the benefits would outweigh this issue.
I am trying to deploy my WPF application to some users who are outside of our corporate network. Everything works great on our LAN but I can't get the updates working when I turn on security as the user is never prompted for their login details?
Does anyone know of a way to secure my ClickOnce files so that only my users can access it? I am not allowed to put this software up without it being secure.
Any help much appreciated.
There is no way to secure your files as the ClickOnce runtime will blindly return to it's deployment point and never keep hold of the users original credentials. I have heard of ways of getting round this using various techniques but its a fair bit of work.
This might be of use www.clickoncerevolution.com.
You could also always consider an MSI installer but you won't get the automatic updates.
Marty
Internally, you can restrict access to the files on the webserver. Externally, there's not much you can do easily.
We handle this by having our customers log in when they run the application, and we verify their credentials against backend services (running on Azure). So they can't run it unless they can log in.
If you don't want to do that, I'll share this article with you. It shows how to serve up your ClickOnce files from a SQL Server database by intercepting the requests to the webserver and responding. If you were smarter with web applications than I am (not a high bar, mind you), maybe you could figure out how to intercept and ask for authentication credentials at that point.
And here's an article from CodeProject where they show one solution for what you're trying to do.
I'm in the process of reengineering a desktop application to a Silverlight4-WCF client-server architecture. Apparently, some (not all) of our clients have very limited resources or dysfunctional relationships with their I/T support staff. Consequently, I've been asked to come up with a solution that would enable these clients to install the new SL app on a local desktop, possibly running IIS locally. Will probably wrap all this up in a installer to make deployment super easy.
While I don't endorse the idea of running IIS locally on each user's desktop, my thinking is that it will probably work. The biggest problem I envision is security -- the server code and configuration would be available locally. Still, I'm looking for input from the wider developer community because I'm uncomfortable by the proposal. What kind of hell and difficulties do you envision, or can this work with minimal fuss?
Using IIS locally may be more trouble than it's worth. Most configuration/maintenance tasks require the user to have Administrator access on the computer. Securing it is a bitch. Making sure its configuration doesn't drift and remains working as you release new versions is even more so. Moreover, it's not included in all Windows editions, e.g. Windows 7 Home edition. I recommend trying to roll with IIS Express as an embedded HTTP server instead.
As for code security - if you can't trust your clients' IT to look after deployment and security, or they can't/don't want to, you could host the server-side yourself and bill your customers for it, i.e. SaaS.
Just my 2 cents.
EDIT:
Oh, yeah. If you're concerned about trade secret theft, e.g. reverse engineering of your server code, just run it through an obfuscator, e.g. SmartAssembly. That'll give you an edge. As for IP theft, e.g. piracy, use could use some online license checking scheme - it won't compromise client privacy, and it'll deter copying.
I've got a website that runs on a shared hosting environment, using ASP.net 2.0 (C#) and MS SQL Server 2005. I've recently been asked if I can integrate my website with a piece of third party desktop software that uses the Access runtime as its database (transparent to the end user).
Primarily I want to be able to offer users of my website the option of exporting their data into the Access database on their local machine. The data schema's match sufficiently, the question is how to actually do this, and in the simplest way possible for the user.
Simply having a webpage update the local Access database isn't possible due to the obvious security restrictions. I've considered asking them to upload the Access database to the server, so I can migrate the data then allow them to download it again, however the competency of the users of this software is such that even locating the Access database, let alone uploading and downloading it from the website might be too complicated.
I've also considered if Adobe Air or Silverlight could help here, but don't know them well enough to know for sure. Similarly I'm assuming another exe could be written to perform this task that the user could simply download and run, however my experience is in web development, not program development, so this isn't a 100% certainty for me, or an ideal development option for me.
So, can this be done, and if so what technique can achieve this, with the stated aims being ease of use for the end user, followed by ease of development by someone with web development as their main skill. Many thanks!
You may find this answer of interest: Best way to stream files in ASP.NET
It is about transferring a file from the server. You could save Excel or CSV and use that to update Access.
Instead of trying to do this in a web page you might just expose some views from your sql server to some client specific logins.
Then within the Access application, allow them to tie to your sql server. You might even provide an access application for getting the data from your site and stuffing it in their local access database.
In my work we have done something similar that is transparent to the user by creating an ActiveX control. The problem is that you are limiting the users to use only Internet Explorer.
I think that the best way to achieve what you are trying to do is by installing a service in the client's computer. If creating a service is beyond your experience you can post a project in a place like oDesk and find somebody that can help you with the development for the money that you are willing to pay to complete your project.
Good Luck.
When creating an auto updating feature for a .NET WinForms application, how does it update the DLLs and not affect the currently running application?
Since the application is running during the update process, won't there be a lock on the DLLs (because those DLLs will have to be overwritten during the update).
Usually you would download the new files into a separate area. Then shutdown and restart and at startup you look for and use the new files if found. Always keeping a last known working version on the side so that the user can revert to something that definitely works if the download causes problems.
ClickOnce is a good technology from Microsoft that does this for you and you can use it directly from Visual Studio 2008.
You'll have to shutdown your application and restart it, as other people have already commented.
I wrote an open-source code to do just that in a transparent mode - including an external update application to do the actual cold update. See http://www.code972.com/blog/2010/08/nappupdate-application-auto-update-framework-for-dotnet/
The code is at http://github.com/synhershko/NAppUpdate (Licensed under the Apache 2.0 license)
I have a seperate 'launcher' application that checks for updates via a web service. If there are updates, it downloads them and then executes my application, which is in a seperate assembly.
The other alternatives are using things like ClickOnce, or downloading the files to a seperate area and restarting the app, as someone else mentioned.
Be warned about ClickOnce, though - it's not as flexible as it sounds. And if you deploy to a system that requires elevating your program to a higer security level to run, you might run into problems if you don't have a certificate for your app installed. I found it very difficult to get straight answers on the Internet to things like certificate management when it comes to ClickOnce. If you have a complex app, you may want to just roll your own updater, which is what I ended up having to do.
If you publish via ClickOnce, all of that tends to be handled for you. It has it's own pro's and con's but usually easier than trying to code it all yourself.
Both Wikipedia and 15seconds have decent info on using ClickOnce, how it works, etc.
As others have stated, ClickOnce isn't as flexible as rolling your own solution but it is a LOT less complicated. It has a small learning curve at first, but with pretty much everything bundled into Visual Studio and the use of Wizards, it usually doesn't take long to stumble onto a working solution.
As deployments get more complex (i.e. beyond than just having prerequisites or application code that needs updating) and you need to do a lot of post-install or pre-install tasks, there are things like WiX which give you somewhat of a hybrid solution between Windows Installer and ClickOnce, with the cost of flexibility being a much steeper learning curve.
The only reason I try to avoid custom installers is that you end up spending way too much time trying to get it just right to handle a bunch of different "What If" scenarios...
These days Windows can do such updates automatically for you with AppInstaller if your app is packaged in the MSIX package.
It downloads the new version of the app in another folder inside ProgramFiles\WindowsApps, then when a user runs the app via the start menu, the system knows what folder it should use. The previous version gets deleted when not in use.
If you want to know how to package your app this way I collected my findings in this answer.