Unable to Send User Data

[digitalrinaldo]

User data config

SendUserData.PNG (42.1 KiB) Viewed 6759 times

User data config

SendUserData.PNG (42.1 KiB) Viewed 6759 times

I have configured user data to be sent and turned on verbose logging and left it so the spawned message is shown. After spending hours on something that should take a few minutes I am giving up and just want to know how to do it. There are so many issues with the terminology and the actual implementation I am not seeing a productivity gain on my part.

I set things as show below. I just want user information to be sent as soon as the install comes up. Ideally I wanted it sent later but the condition wording is not understandable.

When I run this I see a message InstallExecute: Return Value 1 and then Delete Update Started both of which don't provide verbose information. What was run and what was the status value. My server was not contacted with any data. What is the syntax AI_INSTALL and )NOT INSTALLED mean
why isn't there an AI_INSTALL AND INSTALLED

Why doesn't the property AI_SETUPEXEPATH show up when you search for it in a property box.

How do you make this work?

Is there something you can recommend to do the post directly in a script?

Can I pass the properties to my application and take care of it myself?

Please answer all the questions?

[Daniel]

Hello,

What is the syntax AI_INSTALL and )NOT INSTALLED mean
why isn't there an AI_INSTALL AND INSTALLED

The condition (AI_INSTALL AND (NOT INSTALLED)) ) used for your "SendCollectedData" custom action means that your custom action will be executed during package installation only if your package is not already installed on target machine (only if you are performing a first time installation).

Why doesn't the property AI_SETUPEXEPATH show up when you search for it in a property box.

The AI_SETUPEXEPATH is an internal Advanced Installer property and is not currently visible on all fields within Advanced Installer project. We'll try to add an improvement regarding this in a future version of Advanced Installer. Thank you for your suggestion.

How do you make this work?

In order to achieve what you want you should follow our "Collect installation data and send it to a web server" how to's steps. Please keep in mind that, as it is mentioned in the above article, your web server must host a web application capable of processing and storing the received information. You can use the Apache/PHP/MySQL suite or IIS/ASP.NET/MS-SQL suite or any other web technology convenient to you.

Is there something you can recommend to do the post directly in a script?

If you don't want to use our "Send install information to your web server" custom action you can try to create your own custom action which will post the desired properties values to your script hosted on your server.

Can I pass the properties to my application and take care of it myself?

Yes, you can launch your application at the end of installation and pass the related properties as arguments for your application.

All the best,
Daniel

[digitalrinaldo]

Daniel -- thank you for these very precise answers!!!

How do you make this work?

In order to achieve what you want you should follow our "Collect installation data and send it to a web server" how to's steps. Please keep in mind that, as it is mentioned in the above article, your web server must host a web application capable of processing and storing the received information. You can use the Apache/PHP/MySQL suite or IIS/ASP.NET/MS-SQL suite or any other web technology convenient to you.

Is there any more I can do to debug the following. I have attached a Send User Data to an event and the advanced installer log seems to indicate that it was attempted. I get back a "1" which indicates a failure. I have traced the network and observed the server logs and there is no record of a post in the log file and no packet traffic on the network. We are very expert in server technology so we are sure nothing is arriving at the server. How do I debug it? Could one of my fields be wrong, like "COMPANY_NAME" I clicked quite a few of the properties.

BTW -- On Windows 7 N Premium -- the AI_INSTALLDIR is not writable. Just an FYI. I set my output directory to that and launched my application from the Advanced Installer and it could nto write to that directory so I moved it to Local\Temp.

[Daniel]

Hello,

Is there any more I can do to debug the following. I have attached a Send User Data to an event and the advanced installer log seems to indicate that it was attempted. I get back a "1" which indicates a failure.

Please keep in mind that a custom action return value of "1" in log indicate that action completed successfully.

How do I debug it?

You can try to use a PHP script similar with our "collect_file.php" script example attached to our "Collect installation data and send it to a web server" how to. For example, you can download our "collect_file.php" script and host it on your server. Then, you can add a "Send install information to your web server" custom action which will contain in the "URL" field the URL of the "collect_file.php" script hosted on your server. The "collect_file.php" script create a "users.log" file in a "installs" folder which will be created in the containing directory of the "collect_file.php" script hosted on your server.

All the best,
Daniel

[akmal]

Hi,

I have a web service using WCF technologies. Do you have any sample on how to send the info to WCF web service?

regards,
Akmal

[Daniel]

Hello Akmal,

Unfortunately, we don't have any sample using the WCF technologies, but mainly all you have to do is to launch the "Send install information to your web server" custom action on a button push.

All the best,
Daniel