Auto-Updater

About

Auto-Updater is a software updating service that allows users to easily manage and push updates to their clients
Updates are simply maintained on an FTP server and then automatically pushed to clients
Auto-Updater is highly customizable and offers a wide range of features to assist with update management

How it works

• Auto-Updater first connects to the patching FTP server and compares the local client version with the server version and begins to update if the client is out of date
• The FTP server maintains all the patches in compressed zips whereby the patch names comply to a
  patch naming convention i.e. build numbers
• If the client is out of date, Auto-Updater proceeds to download and unpack the patches into a
  specified directory on the client
• After each update, Auto-Updater modifies the client version to the new patched version
• Auto-Updater continues downloading and unpacking patches until the client is up to date

Installation

• Download the latest release
• Unzip the contents into the root directory of the client application you wish to keep updated
• Configure the FTP connection and hook settings in Auto-Updater in data/conf/config.xml
• Set the client version in data/conf/version.xml to the current client version
• Setup your FTP server with patches to push and a Auto-Updater version.xml file

Setting up the FTP Server

• Add the application server version file version.xml to the FTP Server The FTP server should have a version file that keeps track of the latest client version so that Auto-Updater can check it, compare it to a current client version
  and then download all patches that are missing prior to the latest version
  The server version.xml file is the same as its client counterpart and should look like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<app-version>
  <build-id>100</build-id>
  <build-date>03-03-17</build-date>
  <build-version>1.0</build-version>
</app-version>

• Add the patches to the FTP Server
  The FTP server needs to maintain all patches that are available for the application
  A patch can contain files and directories
  Each patch must be zipped up and follow the patch naming convention
  By default Auto-Updater uses build numbers for patches i.e. 101.zip
  Patch zips must be in the same FTP directory as the server version.xml

• FTP Server file structure example

100.zip
101.zip
102.zip
version.xml

Configuration

• Connection config
  This component of the config sets the FTP server connection properties
  For a local server the hostname can be left as 127.0.0.1 otherwise the global IP will need to be specified
  The username and password of your FTP server user needs to be included, this user account should have
  read & write privledges to download from the server and update version files

<connection-config>
  <!-- FTP server address/IP -->
  <hostname>127.0.0.1</hostname>

  <!-- FTP server port (201 default) -->
  <port>201</port>

  <!-- FTP server user -->
  <username>ftpguest</username>

  <!-- FTP server users password -->
  <password>ftppassword</password>
</connection-config>

• Behaviour config
  These configs set how the Auto-Updater behaves after it has finished updating
  At minimum you will need to set the exit-launch-path as the path to the file you wish to launch if an update is successful
  Auto-Updater will execute (if enable-exit-launch is set true) the application and
  pass a parameter indicating the status of the update
  You can force Auto-Updater to continue to launch the application even if an update failed and you can
  also disable launching the application

<!-- Update completion/exit behaviour settings -->
<behaviour-config>
  <!-- Enable/disable forced launch of application
     If true, application will attempt to launch even if update failed
  -->
  <force-launch>true</force-launch>

  <!-- Enable/disable launching of a application after update completion -->
  <enable-exit-launch>true</enable-exit-launch>

  <!-- Status paramater name to pass to executing application -->
  <status-arg-name>s</status-arg-name>

  <!-- Path to executing application -->
  <exit-launch-path>data/graphi.jar</exit-launch-path>
</behaviour-config>

• Interface Config
  Here you can enable/disable the GUI completely as well as set the splash image

• Log Config
  Auto-Updater has optional logging which include error and update logs
  You can enable/disable logging, set the log paths and log sizes

• Patch Config
  These settings change the paths of client, server and output patching directories
  By default Auto-Updater will unpack all patches in the root of the application folder
  The version naming type can also be changed

License

Auto-Updater is available under the MIT License
See LICENSE for more details