MAKEMSI quickly and reliably creates MSI files in a non-programmatic way\Source CodeCommandsFileFind

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The "FileFind" Command

This command is used to find a file or directory (perhaps to validate its existance).

Unfortunately the Windows Installer "AppSearch" logic is not smart enough to be able to search the "PATH" environment variable.

The found item's name is placed into a property specified by you.

As the search is done via an "AppSearch" table entry, you may wish to modify the sequencing of this action.

This command takes these parameters:

• File (required)
  This command allows searching for a file or directory. To search for a directory pass "" to this parameter otherwise pass a filename without a path (for example "iexplore.exe").

  If the filename is not a valid "8.3" name then you may want to consider using the "8.3" parameter otherwise MAKEMSI will determine the "likely" (not potentially "known") name.

  This parameter also supports the "8.3|long" windows installer format.

• 8.3 (optional)
  This is the 8.3 (short name) of the file we are searching for. If an "8.3" name is not supplied then if required one will be generated however this may not always match the one you really need to find (for example if you need to find "A_FILE~7.TXT" and not "A_FILE~1.TXT").

• Property (required)
  This is the name of the property to be updated if the file (or directory) is found (it must not contain lower case characters). This property is not created if the item doesn't exist!

• Default (optional)
  Prior to searching for the file (or directory), the property is set to this value and no validation need take place.

  If not specified then the existance of the property will be validated (the install will fail if it does not exist).

  This value can be "" to indicate that no validation should take place (the property is not set to null).

• Message (optional)
  If you have not used the "Default" parameter and the MSI needs to display an error message it will use a default message unless you specify what it should say with this parameter. Note that the message can contain MSI formatting.

• Validate (optional)
  If you don't supply a default value then normally validation will take place to ensure the search succeeded, pass "Y" in this parameter to prevent the validation.

• ValidateAfter (optional)
  The validation (if performed) is inserted into the "InstallUISequence" and "InstallExecuteSequence" tables. By default the check will be inserted after the standard "AppSearch" action, this parameter can be used to specify another action name.

  The need for this parameter is probably rare but you would need to specify "ResolveSource" if you wish to look for files relative to the "SourceDir" (MSI) directory. See the "COMPANY_INSERT_ResolveSourceAction" macro or take some other action to install this action if required.

• Parent (optional)
  This is the "Parent" row of the "DrLocator" table and defaults to "".

• Path (optional)
  This is the "Path" row of the "DrLocator" table and defaults to "". It allows you to specify a root for the search (for example "[ProgramFilesFolder]").

• Depth (optional)
  This is the "Depth" row of the "DrLocator" table and defaults to "6". It indicates how many directory levels deep the search goes from the root. This speeds up the search but could mean that you miss what you are after.

• MinVersion (optional)
  This is the "MinVersion" row of the "Signature" table and defaults to "".

• MaxVersion (optional)
  This is the "MaxVersion" row of the "Signature" table and defaults to "".

• MinSize (optional)
  This is the "MinSize" row of the "Signature" table and defaults to "".

• MaxSize (optional)
  This is the "MaxSize" row of the "Signature" table and defaults to "".

• MinDate (optional)
  This is the "MinDate" row of the "Signature" table and defaults to "".

• MaxDate (optional)
  This is the "MaxDate" row of the "Signature" table and defaults to "".

• Languages (optional)
  This is the "Languages" row of the "Signature" table and defaults to "".

• Condition (optional)
  Not normally required but if specified is an extra condition which has to match for an error message to be displayed. This could be useful if you only wanted to validate during install etc.

• Signature (optional)
  A search "signature" is something that gets displayed to the user, it is an MSI "Identifier" and so can't contain spaces and most special characters.

  The default signature is the property name so if you make this meaningful then you probably don't need to use this parameter (except in the case where you might be populating the same property from two or more sources).

EXAMPLES

Look for "PPWIZARD.REX" to a maximum directory depth of 4:

<$FileFind File="PPWIZARD.REX" Property="PPWIZARD.REX" Depth=4>
<$FileFind File="IEXPLORE.EXE" Property="IEXPLORE.EXE" Path="[ProgramFilesFolder]">
#(
   <$FileFind
           File="JAR.EXE"
       Property="JAR.EXE"
           Path="[ProgramFilesFolder]"
        Message=^Could not install this product as "JAR.EXE" could not be
                 located in the "[ProgramFilesFolder]" directory tree!^
   >
#)

EXAMPLE - Does Directory Exist?

In the following, if the directory doesn't exist then a message will be displayed (implements a "launch condition"):

<$FileFind File="" Property="SOMEDIR" Path="c:\SomeDir\SomeSubDir">

For an example of finding a file that may be located in more than one place have a look at the "Finding 'WSCRIPT.EXE' or 'CSCRIPT.EXE' Files" tip

Please email me any feedback, additional information or corrections. See this page online (look for updates) MAKEMSI© is (C)opyright Dennis Bareis 2003-2008 (All rights reserved). Saturday December 27 2008 at 3:15pm Visit MAKEMSI's Home Page