Auto Updater

[bsteiner0385]

Alright... so I am trying to make a program that will check the local files on your computer and compare them to the same set of files on a file server... I want the program to replace any file on your local computer that has an newer version on the server. For example... I have a set of 8 documents on a fileserver. A person uses the program I am building to check for updates, and since they have not ever downloaded anything it will download all 8 files to the directory of their choice. A month later 3 of the files have been changed on the fileserver. The user runs the program again, and only the 3 files with modifications will be downloaded and replace the original local copies.

 

[liptonIcedTea]

yeah...

so what is your question?

 

[bsteiner0385]

i have no idea how to begin... i know about recursive file checks for multiple folders and whatnot, but I wanted an opinion on the best way to do this, via ftp or some other way... also maybe some reference websites to look at or some ideas on the code to look at the date on the fileserver files...

 

[liptonIcedTea]

i have no idea how to begin... i know about recursive file checks for multiple folders and whatnot, but I wanted an opinion on the best way to do this, via ftp or some other way... also maybe some reference websites to look at or some ideas on the code to look at the date on the fileserver files...

how i would recommend doing it...

have a windows service running that checks periodically, like every week or whatever, that calls a web service on the file server and returns an array of hashcodes for the current assemblies.

check these hashcodes against the assemblies on your own computer and if they are different, then the file has changed, so download them again.