Reading Properties from an MSI

Question

Hello all,

I'm trying to read properties from the Property table in an MSI.  I've tried using pinvoking msi.dll and using MsiGetProperty but it's not working.  pinvoke is seriously confusing me so I'm just going off of code samples that I've found online and none of them are working.  So I'll lay out a scenario for what I want to do.

A user pulls up a dialog that prompts him to browse for an MSI file.  A file browser appears and they select it.  They then click 'OK' and it shows a message box with the ProductName, ProductVersion and Manufacturer.

The dialogs are created and done, just can't get the right functionality to pull those properties.  A code example would help tremendously.

 

Thanks!

Answer 1

Oops. Hit post too early. You could put some programming in the Pre-Init, too. That doesn't solve the null in the session variable, but it would fire before the page load.

Answer 2

I'm not familiar with I-frame, but some ideas that come to mind...
1. The last time I couldn't find a Session variable I was CERTAIN I had, I didn't have enable session state set to true.
2. Another thought is that it might not be set before the other event fires
3. Are you sure all the names that reference the Session variable are the same including capitol letters and exact spelling (I depend on Intellisense a LOT, so I'm forever mistyping the Session Variable names).
4. If all else fails, I would put some temporary variables and breakpoints in during debug to see when the Session Variable loses its value.

HTH

Answer 3

Well... there's nothing special about the code. Basically what I've done to test it is just set the menu item's NavigateURL, it's Target, and I added some text to it's Value property.

Then in the Item Cleck event I just add the Value to a Session variable. As soon as the other page loads I call the session variable to see if it actually added anything. Then the page complains about the Session Variable... "not set to an instance of an object...".

But if I try the same without the iFrame it works.


Why I want to di this:
I have a few pages in which my client's clients can fill in Details about the item they want to add to there insurance or Amend and item. The add and amend is almost the same and thus I want to try and use the same page for both. But I need to know what was clicked so that I know if the user wants to add or amend.

I hope it makes sense.

Thanks

Answer 4

Sounds like a coding error. You might post some relevant code so we can see what you're doing.