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How Can a Web Page Display What Version a File is In Program Files Directory?

For example, if I wanted to send a user a URL that would show the user what version of our software is installed (version number and release date) on their Windows PC. I'm just talking about file properties, not actually running something.

Is there a way to do this with .Net/ASP.Net?

John Cruz
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  • I could perhaps work if the website is on a local intranet, but a website normally does not have access to the client folders, especially a folder that requires admin privileges. – VDWWD Feb 21 '18 at 18:31
  • I'll prefer just to add About-view or similar to program where user can see file versions and other metadata about program. – Risto M Feb 21 '18 at 18:35

2 Answers2

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The answer is no.

The best you can do with HTML5 or Javascript is to let the user select a file and even then you have very limited access to properties (at most name, size and type) without having the user upload the file.

The most efficient solution right now would be to serve a very basic clickonce application which would locate the files, read the properties and send the information back to the server. From there you can choose to redirect the user back to your website with the information you collected.

Lennart Stoop
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Generally access to the Programm folder is limited at best. There used to be a time when we even would write data like Configuration files there. That was Windows 95/98. And it was frowned upon back then.

With the introduction of NTFS with Windows NT (and later XP in the Consumer area), enforceable rules were put in place. Rights tend to be highly limited. This is even more true of Webservers, as they tend to be prime targets for hacking. The only rights you can expected a Webserver to have is read rights to it's programm and the content directory. Maybe if the admin is really nice and it really helps with performance, it might have write rights on a Temporary subfolder of Contents.

Reading out your version from a file is propably possible with only read rights, but not the right way. Usually you just let the compiler hardcode (insert as constant) whatever Version is given in the Project file or by the Version Tracking Software.

So the first thing is that you need some approach of Version Control. And then your answer depends "however this Version control mechanism does tracking of the Compiled version". There is some limited version tracking support in Visual Studio itself. But there is also full, 3rd party Version tracking Software.

Christopher
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