True Update with paid subscription check

[TheoLogic]

We are looking at the possibility of implementing subscriptions for updates. For example, new users would receive a free year, then have to subscribe, sort of like Norton Antivirus and others. Is it possible to have TrueUpdate check the status in an users database on the server or via some other method, then do the upgrade if qualified or notify the user if a new subscription is required?

[Darryl]

Re: True Update with paid subscription check

Yes, my guess is that you could probably create a design with TrueUpdate that would accomplish that task. However the design is the hard part.

You would need to set up some sort of validation on a server, that would handle all of the subscription details, for example to allow the update to proceed or not.

The feature in particular that you would likely use is the "Submit to Web" action.

You can also create Control Structures in order to conditionally launch actions. Another action you may need is the Abort action which will abort the update process.

Play around with the evaluation version and see if you can come up with something suitable for your needs.

[Corey]

Re: True Update with paid subscription check

The server part is easy, you just need to use a server side scripting language like PHP, JSP, or ASP to create a script which validates the user and then generates a unique subscription update key at runtime. The key can then be returned for addition to the user's registry.

Corey Milner
Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

[TMetrics]

Re: True Update with paid subscription check

Our group is also evaluating this product and we are using some of the fabuolous features like reading from an INI file at run-time to determine update paths and methods... local vs. HTTP vs. FTP etc. It is quite flexible with only a little scripting.
Our company already has a subscription service in place for almost all of our products and this is regulated using an on-line database available for users. Each site has their own username and password to login and download software. Do you have any examples or more detailed information of how we might tie into this database with your product. I am somewhat following what you are listing above, but would like more information. If we an lock down our updates to current subscribers, this will be a sure winner for us. We are attempting to stay away from Registry entries as this tends to lead to a permissions problem, but can certainly use INI files.
Thank you in advance for any help you can provide.
Regards,
Keith

[Brett]

Re: True Update with paid subscription check

You could probably use the Submit to Web action in TU to do this. If you already have your database on the Web, all that you need to do is use this action to submit to a PHP/ASP/Perl (or whatever) page, have the script determine from the DB whether or not they are a valid user, and then return to TU wheteher or not they are a valid user.

See "Submit to Web" the the TrueUpdate Help file for more details about this action.

[TMetrics]

Re: True Update with paid subscription check

Thank you. We have a sample now posting to an ASP page and the page returning either TRUE or FALSE. I was hoping you could help us determine some common ways for the user account information to be entered on the client's PC. That is, we have tested reading a user and pass from an INI file and that seems to work just fine. What I am curious of though is if anyone has any recommendations on some various methods to get this information first filled out on the customer's PC (short of manually entering this data into the INI). Any ideas would be gratefully received. I would also be happy to post our example once it is functional if that would help others.

Thanks,
Keith

[Darryl]

Re: True Update with paid subscription check

There's really no option to allow user's to enter information through TrueUpdate. The only things I could think of are:

1) Create a small application that would simply prompt the user for this information and then write it to an INI file. You could then launch this application if that INI file entry is not found initially.

2) Open a text document during the update process and prompt the user to enter that information and close the program. Then read that information from the text file and write it to the INI file.

3) Create something in HTML that you could launch on the user's system to gather this information(Not sure if that is possible)

Hope that helps.