Only Patch Registered users. How?

[dsmith08]

Hi everyone. Im a new user and now have 3 Indigo products. they are magic, solved lots of distribution problems for me.

At present I want to release my first patch but only want it to patch registered programs. Can I script the patch to open a file and read the contents to verify that the program is registered? and can I decrypt the file contents?

Maybe there is a better way. I learning fast and would appreciate any help.

Cheers,
Dan.
Additional notes - I gave my program away free and encouraged free registration. I want to have everyones details for my database so Im hoping the new features in the patch will encourage more registrations. I dont want it to just update the program and i still dont know who they are. I think that made sense..... :eek:

[Brett]

You can definitely script just about anything you want to in Visual Patch. What type of encryption was applied to the file you need to read?

[dsmith08]

You can definitely script just about anything you want to in Visual Patch. What type of encryption was applied to the file you need to read?

Hi Brett,
Thanks for helping. I used a custom encryption in VB (very basic, just designed to discourage rather than secure).

I would be very thankful for some example script to read a plain text file into a variable and then I can write an if then to test it. Once I have that up and running I might be able to figure out the encryption.

The registration file is stored in the windows system directory (ie system32 in xp and system in win98 etc) or simply in the program to be patched directory if this isnt possible.

Cheers for now,
Dan. :yes

[Ted Sullivan]

Hi Dan,

Loading a text file into a string variable is really easy in Visual Patch 2.0.

TextFile.ReadToString

string TextFile.ReadToString (
string Filename )

Description
Reads the contents of a text file and returns it as a string.

Parameters
Filename
(string) The full path to the text file.

Returns
(string) A string containing the contents of the text file. If an error occurs, a blank string "" is returned. You can use Application.GetLastError to determine whether this action failed, and why.

ResultVariable
When adding an action with the action editor, you can use this field to specify a variable that the return value will be stored in.

Example 1
text_contents = TextFile.ReadToString(_SourceFolder .. "\\Information.txt");

Reads the contents of the file "Information.txt" and stores the string in the variable text_contents.

Note: _SourceFolder is a built-in variable that contains the path to the folder where the setup.exe file is located.

Here's a link to the help file topic for all the details:
http://www.indigorose.com/webhelp/vp20/Program_Reference/Actions/TextFile.ReadToString.htm

[dsmith08]

Hi Dan,

Loading a text file into a string variable is really easy in Visual Patch 2.0.



Here's a link to the help file topic for all the details:
http://www.indigorose.com/webhelp/vp20/Program_Reference/Actions/TextFile.ReadToString.htm

Thanks Ted for your help (I didn't manage to stumble over that help file but have a running start now).
Cheers,
Dan.