XML Updates Page

The XML Updates functionality allows you to achieve the following installation tasks:

• Create an XML file from scratch.
• Update an existing XML file on the target machine.
• Dynamically alter the contents of an XML file part of your installation package.
• Create, update, remove XML elements at runtime.
• Create, update, remove XML attributes at install, uninstall or both.
• Use Windows Installer formatted references (properties, files, folders) in element text and attribute value. This will allow you to have runtime configurable entries in the XML file.
• Configurable installation error policy.
• Support for UTF-8, UTF-16, ASCII and ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) encodings.
• Support for XML element and attribute localization.

The XML file updates feature works on all Windows platforms, starting from Windows 95 through Windows Vista, and has no additional third party software/library dependencies.

The XML file support can be used for configuring XML files that are part of the installation package or that are already present on the target system. For example if you have a large XML file that you want to update there is no need to import it completely in the XML editor. You can add the XML as a "regular file" and use the editor to customize the parts you want. To do this create a new XML update file which should contain only the elements that are to be added, changed or deleted at run time. This is possible because the "regular" XML file is installed on the target machine before the XML changes are applied.

When the XML updates are used to configure a file from the installation package, use the "New XML File" option to create a new XML update with the same name and installation directory.

Creating new XML updates

Use the [ New XML File ] toolbar button or the "New XML File" tree/list context menu item.

Editing an existing XML update

Use the [ Properties... ] toolbar button, the "Properties..." list context menu item, press the Enter key while the focus is on an XML file in the "Files" panel or double click on an XML file.

XML files can be renamed, moved or removed just like regular Files.