I'm very new to Visual Studio 2010. I decided to create a simple WFA with C#.
Everything work fine with Images and Audio playback. My intention is to create a standalone application and send it to my friend as a gift. Problem I facing now is that when I tried to publish the application, the Images / Audio is still using the same location in my PC. So it won't play nor display any images.
Any comment on this or guide for me? I did try search for solution but doesn't seems to have any luck.
This is the code that I used to play Audio :
SoundPlayer ply = new SoundPlayer(#"C:\Users\Liam619\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\BirthdayApp\BirthdayApp\Resources\BirthdaySong.wav");
If I remove or change the path, the Application will hit error for locating the Audio file.
There may be several solutions to your problem.
a) embed the sound into a resource. As a beginner, resources may be a bit tricky to get it right the first time. But I want to encourage you reading something about it. You'll need resources when you want to translate your first program.
b) create an installer which copies the sound file to the installation directory. Try InnoSetup. If you're a programmer, sooner or later, you'll need to create a Setup anyway. Always worth knowing how to do that.
In that case, you still need the path to the sound file, but if you install your EXE into the same path as the sound file, see getting the application's executable directory.
everything in the database whether images or audio refers to your own server database.you have to send the database too with the app and the correct version .NET framework needs to be installed on the target PC.
Related
I know this question has been asked lots of times but mostly I couldnt find the answer I was looking for.
How do popular applications update themselfs ?
I found some libraries that update applications but mostly they just replace all the application files. This way my Updater would need to download around 200mb everytime.
Also ClickOnce is used a lot but this in my oppinion is an ugly way to update and install because the GUI is not really fancy and you can't even specify where to install the application.
I know some applications also replace the installer and just run the new one to deinstall the old version and install the new one but that cant be that right way...
So how do Programs like Mobirise, Discord or Teamspeak update themselfs ?
I have a have made a POS Solution(C#), working in 4 Shops.
This is what i've done to give client side updates.
Used Google Drive to upload installer file + a text file mentioning installer version, once uploaded each time the programe starts up it downloads the version text file from Google Drive, if it doesn't match the current version of the software which the clients Has, Messagebox Prompts a newer version is avaliable. Client then can click Upgrade and it will download the installer file, once downloaded software exits completely calling a python script which will Run the installer file.
This is not the best way but it works, becouse Google Drive has its own file version history which makes it easy for me to keep track of updates i send.
Hope I Helped <3
You can design the application to be patchable.
Patching is not a hot flavour in windows world.
I am trying to find a way to call python from my UWP app. So far I have a .exe file that I have compiled from python using pyinstaller (www.pyinstaller.org/). This basically allows me to package up my python script as a standalone binary (ie: you don't need python to run it). This all works well and I can call my wrapped up python .exe via cmd.exe no problem:
$ process.exe -p "path\to\file"
$ Processing file: "path\to\file"...
$ Done.
So now I just need to call it from my UWP app - so I have added it to my application like so:
C# Project
Assets/process.exe
Frustratingly, I've not had much luck googling for answers to my problem - my attempted solutions so far have included:
Calling the "Assets/process.exe" directly from my app
Looked at "Launch an app and get results". I think this seams to be for external applications however... I certainly didn't get it going anyway.
Opening the cmd.exe (somehow) and calling my process.exe from there.
I'm not even sure if I'm trying to do this the correct way or not. Or if I have just not understood some of my findings. Or (fingers crossed) there is a simple solution to this I just don't know about and have somehow missed as I'm very new to UWP development and C#.
So any solutions/pointers here would be greatly appreciated thanks!!
UWP apps are 'sandboxed'; i.e. they have many security restrictions placed upon them to isolate them from the rest of Windows (like not being able to read/write to the Registry and not being able to directly access random files from the file system).
So there is no way to run an .exe (or any other executable) from your UWP app. If you have access to a StorageFile (say music, video or any other file format) then you can launch the file in the default program associated with that file type.
So, I want to create a simple launcher for a game that I'm making for Windows. I want to write it on Visual Studio so it can do the following:
Launch the game wherever the .exe file is. (either via registry key or by the user selecting the destination)
Auto-install all the needed dependences for the game if they are missing or provide a link to install them.
Verify intergrity of the files.
Auto download the latest patch or take the user to the patch download site (optional).
In addition of these, I need some help on the following:
Assuming that I can set it up to download the patch, how can I deliver it? I'm not sure that the program can download files from SkyDrive can it?
How do I set it up as a 32-bit program? I have a 64-bit system here.
Is it possible to write a Metro version of the launcher using the same code?
Please note that the game will be in a "installable format". I'll be using Install Creator for this.
Thanks for any help in advance.
I've written a similar software before for a game, that did almost the same things as you described. Given that you have not shown any code, I'll answer the 3 questions in a general, basic way.
1.) Depends on what you mean by patch. An installer that supposed to replace or extend existing files, delete old files, deploy new ones? In that case it's up to the installer to manage it. If a patch simply downloads a file and puts it in the right place you can download it from either Skydrive (DriveOne) or any other place. Check out the API and the examples here.
2.) I'm not sure I understand this question, but I think you just want to compile your binary to 32bit in visual studio and that's it.
3.) Yes.
Hello fellow programmers.
I recently made a mistake while using the SQLite-NET package for Windows Phone 8.1. When opening a new SQLiteConnection, I would give as parameter to its constructor the string "data.db", without being actually aware of what was going on under the hood. Later on, I noticed that the file wouldn't be deleted, even if I uninstalled the application (since I would have in my app the same entries that I had before uninstalling it); I assume that I should be using the local folder for application data instead.
However, here is the real question: what the hell is the folder where the data.db file was created? I tried to figure it out with the following piece of code:
var file = await StorageFile.GetFileFromApplicationUriAsync(new Uri("ms-appx:///data.db"));
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(file.Path);
and what I got as output of the WriteLine method was the path
C:\Data\SharedData\PhoneTools\AppxLayouts\f7529f24-ba24-4fdb-8353-cff9214180a0VS.Debug_ARM.Valbrand\data.db,
which only got me even more confused. I couldn't find any satisfactory info on this, and I would REALLY like to further my understanding of what happened here.
Thanks in advance!
The path you are looking at is the install directory of your app. You have a Silverlight 8.1 app, so the path is slightly different than a Silverlight 8.0 app, but the articles here and here will help you get a rough understanding.
The recommended usage of this directory is to take the resources that you want backed up out of it on first run and move them to the app data container, so they can be backed up by the system.
C:\Data\SharedData\PhoneTools\AppxLayouts\f7529f24-ba24-4fdb-8353-cff9214180a0VS.Debug_ARM.Valbrand\data.db
This is the path on your phone/emulator.
And This is not the location where you can find in your PC.
I am planning to create a screen saver. Thinking of trying out some WPF as well. Anyways, I am not quite sure how I would organize the screen saver on disk in the file system. I have mainly two related issues that I am very uncertain on how to solve:
Normally an application lives, with all its 3rd party assemblies, static resources, images, etc., in the Program Files folder and is run from there. For example C:\Program Files\MyScreenSaver. But (if I haven't missed something) the executable of a screen saver in windows need to have the scr extension and to live in the system folder, for example C:\Windows\System32. How do you program the screen saver so that it can find the "rest of itself"? Would you use the windows registry? Or creat some sort of config file next to the scr file with the path to the rest? And would you make the scr to just be sort of a launcher of an exe in the application folder? Or would this be a bad idea?
I also want the screen saver to download new content from certain places on the internet. But where do I put it, and how does the screen saver find it? If I have understood correctly, an application is not to create new contents in its application folder, but rather in a user folder. How do I find that folder? Do you build it up from environment variables? And in what specific directory should things like this really be in? For example on Vista I see that you have one folder called C:\ProgramData. You also have C:\Users\username\AppData\Local, C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow and C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming. Have also seen a lot of programs dump stuff in the my documents folder (although I hate programs cluttering up my documents folder, so I will probably try to avoid that :p).
What are some best practices when it comes to these issues of laying out your application in the file system? I am want it to be best and "most correct" for Windows 7, which means it will probably work the same in Vista as well (?), but it would also need to work in XP, since a lot of people are using that still.
I'm still using XP :)
System.Environment.SpecialFolders is what you want for these special locations.
Say,
System.Environment.SpecialFolder.LocalApplicationData
For a screen saver I'd try to put most of it in the .exe (.scr) file. It might make the executable quite big but I think it's worth it.
For the downloaded content use application data folder, or maybe allow user to set the location (put the path in registry). For example if you are downloading images, the user might want to put that in My Pictures folder.
You can put it in the System32 (or SysWOW64) folder, but you can also put it in just the Windows folder, which would prevent x86 vs x64 issues.
You can find some other hard to find, but important information about writing screen savers here:
https://github.com/steveniles/MandelZoom/wiki
(Disclosure: I wrote the above wiki as a companion for the source code of one of my own screen savers.)