topic Re: Clickonce Application in Discussions

Clickonce Application

kyle_lamson — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 18:51:36 GMT

Does anyone have the syntax needed to run a clickonce application. I've tried

RunProgram(executable("clickonce application"));

Which I figured wouldn't work. Are there any other options?

Re: Clickonce Application

txnelson — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 20:53:40 GMT

The following might be of use, it was taken from:

http://www.brad-smith.info/blog/archives/535

Starting ClickOnce applications

Unlike normal executables, applications deployed using ClickOnce are started using a bootstrapper (which is normally handled by the shell). This includes applications written in Windows Forms, WPF or Silverlight. Shortcuts to ClickOnce apps have the extension .appref-ms (rather than .lnk for regular shortcuts), and these files are not recognised by the start command (as in the previous example).

Thankfully, they can be run using the following syntax:

`1`	`rundll32.exe dfshim.dll,ShOpenVerbShortcut [path to appref-ms file]`

Where [path to appref-ms file] is the full path to the ClickOnce shortcut file. The path may include environment variables such as %USERPROFILE% if, for example, you want to point to a shortcut on the user’s desktop.

How does this work?

The rundll32 command executes a function in a Win32 DLL as if it were an executable file. You might want to use this when you have a function which is predominantly called from code (but still operates independently), if you want to avoid creating many executables when a single DLL will suffice, or to deliberately obfuscate a command that users are not intended to start.
dfshim.dll is responsible for much of the functionality in ClickOnce; it contains functions to install, remove, start and update applications, and is distributed as part of the .NET Framework.
The name of the function we want is ShOpenVerbShortcut, which is the same function that the windows shell uses to run .appref-ms shortcut files. You simply pass a path to the function and it takes care of the rest.

Re: Clickonce Application

kyle_lamson — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 21:16:05 GMT

I figured it out after enough poking around.

web("clickonce application.appref-ms");

Re: Clickonce Application

pzang — Mon, 08 Jul 2019 17:14:36 GMT

The rundll32 method works by itself but I cannot find a way to pass parameter to the .appref-ms. I eventually solved the problem by using the following:

RunProgram(
	executable( "cmd.exe" ),
	options(
		{"/c",
		"\!"PathToShortcut.appref-ms\!"",
		"parameter"}
	),
	readfunction( "text" )
);

I added the double quotes to my PathToShortcut.appref-ms because it has spaces.

Re: Clickonce Application

pzang — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 01:26:13 GMT

Using the rundll32 method, the parameter can be passed to the clickonce program like below:

RunProgram(
	executable( "rundll32.exe" ),
	options( {"dfshim.dll,ShOpenVerbShortcut","PathToShortcut.appref-ms|parameter"} ), 
	readfunction( "text" )
);