AutoUpdate for VB.NET

• Download DLL - 18.66 KB
• Download source code - 19.95 KB

Introduction

You can use this library for checking for updates for your application. It's simple and small (only one function). The update package must be a zip file.

Using the Code

The DLL only contains one function: CheckForUpdates in the AutoUpdate namespace.

It has the following arguments:

• NewestVersionLocation As String - This is the file location on the Internet where your newest version is placed, in plaintext. The file can only contain, for example: 2.0.
  You can use a *.txt file for this, but any extension is possible.
• NewestVersionDownloadLocation As String - This is the file location on the Internet where your newest application (files) are stored in a zip file.
• UnzipDir As String - This is the directory where the files must be extracted. If you use an empty string, or you omit this argument, the startup path of the application is used.
• DisplayWindow As Boolean - With this, you can choose to display the download window or not.
• MsgBoxText As String - This is the message displayed in a MsgBox if there is an update available.
• MsgBoxTitle As String - This is the title of that MsgBox.

For the source code, download the zip file above, it has comments on my own written code.

Using an empty string for the last four arguments means the same as omitting them.

Example to Use

AutoUpdate.CheckForUpdates(http://yourdomain.com/versions/app.txt, _
    "http://yourdomain.com/update_downloads/app.zip", "", True, _
    "Newer version available. Download it?", "")

References

• VB Forums
• INI Files Will Never Die: How-To in .NET

History

• 1^st May, 2008: Initial post