C# – securing a clickonce update location

cclickoncenet

I've got an app that publishes and updates from an http update location (I publish to the ftp site of the host, and update from the website).

The publish.htm page is very handy as I can install the app on any machine, anywhere without needing media. The problem is, so can anyone else. How can I secure the update location so that only authorized users can install the app without buggering the auto-update feature of clickonce?

Best Answer

Is this an internal application? If so you could just exclude the publish.htm page from your deployment. Then to install you would then just use the application manifest link http://yoursite/YourApplication.application which should kick the install off, this would not affect automatic updates. This may be just enough obfuscation to for your purposes.

Failing that you can dynamically generate the application manifest using a little bit of asp.net which would only produce the manifest for the users you want. The other benefit this has is that you can isolate a small group of users when rolling out a new version.

Just a thought.

Related Solutions

C# – How to update the GUI from another thread

The simplest way is an anonymous method passed into Label.Invoke:

// Running on the worker thread
string newText = "abc";
form.Label.Invoke((MethodInvoker)delegate {
    // Running on the UI thread
    form.Label.Text = newText;
});
// Back on the worker thread

Notice that Invoke blocks execution until it completes--this is synchronous code. The question doesn't ask about asynchronous code, but there is lots of content on Stack Overflow about writing asynchronous code when you want to learn about it.

.net – ClickOnce Hosting Requirements

I'm pretty sure that Visual Studio will try to use the FrontPage Server Extensions if you specify an http URI as your "Publishing Folder Location". If you're publishing to a server without FPSE support, use an ftp URI (or a UNC path if you have direct access to the server) instead.

I've always used ftp to deploy my Internet-hosted ClickOnce apps and it works a treat.

You can specify the "Installation folder URL" as an http URI - just make sure you use ftp for the publishing location.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – How to update the GUI from another thread

.net – ClickOnce Hosting Requirements

Related Topic