If you’re using NAppUpdate framework to publish your WinForm app, this post is for you.

Assume that you already setup NAppUpdate successfully. Now we want to simplify it to just 1 click publish, and the others clients can just update it

Server side

In your server, you need a path to store the xml file. For my case, I will create a subdomain for it. E.g.

pub.yoursite.com

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cd /var/www/pub.yoursite.com

Assume your site hosted in this path

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.
├── releases
├── index.php
└── release.xml

The index.php you can just simply put some dummy text into it, because the most important file is release.xml

The content of release.xml is auto generated. I’ve created the php file, download it to your server, and place it anywhere, (e.g. /path/to/publish.php)

Then create a cronjob for it

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* * * * * /usr/bin/php /path/to/publish.php > /dev/null 2>&1

This cronjob will run every minute, so once you have new file published to server, it will auto generate the release.xml

WinForm (Visual Studio)

First you need to build the project

Build the project

Then go to property there

Project property

And the go to Publish tab

Publish settings

Set your FTP details, then publish it

Server side

Edit the file /path/to/publish.php, change the constants to match your own

  • PUBLISH_INPUT_ROOT: /home/ftpuser/path/to/releases/Application\ Files
  • PUBLISH_OUTPUT_ROOT: /var/www/pub.yoursite.com/releases
  • PUBLISH_XML_FEED: /var/www/pub.yoursite.com/release.xml
  • WINFORM_PREFIX: YourProject_
  • BASE_URL: http://pub.yoursite.com

Now once your app published, the cronjob will execute this php script, and the script will generate release.xml,
and copy the necessary files to releases folder.

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.
├── releases
│   ├── v1.0.0.1
│   └── v1.0.0.2
├── index.php
└── release.xml

Inside the releases folder will then have all version of what you have published.