MSDN's overview is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/aa368036.aspx
A control can both publish (send out) and subscribe to (receive from others) events. However, not all controls can do both, and what they can do varies by control, by event, and by whether they are reporting or listening. Further, you can publish to an event OR a property. Publishing a property means that when the control would have fired that event, some property is set to the event's value. Publishing an event means "shouting out: Hey, xyz(abc) just happened!" where xyz is the event name and abc is the event value. Subscribing to an event hooks some control's attribute to an event, such that when that event is published, that control's attribute will be set to the event's value. Some events have built-in listeners, others don't. All of the documented defined events are listed on this page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/aa368043.aspx Since I don't use internal UI all that much, I forgot you can't call MsiProcessMessage from a custom action called via DoAction from an event. So, the only thing you can do with your custom action is change properties. Properties used for conditions are only evaluated when the dialog is first populated, so the only way to "refresh" the dialog is to replace the dialog with itself (assuming that can be done, which I don't honestly know). You would have to use the same event that calls your custom action with a later order value so that the activity that subscribes to that event runs after your custom action has completed. The event mapping is "set", so typically what happens is you get the following kind of model: You can use some event from some control to fire your CA, which evaluates and sets a property. That same event can then trigger a pop-up dialog based on your property if you are reporting an error condition, which returns to your dialog when the user acknowledges it and tries again. That same event can move to another dialog based on another state of your property, for example, you passed validation. The above model is a type of PID validation sample I remember from the SDK a while back, but I am having trouble finding just where I found it before. When/if I find it, I will show what the markup looks like to implement it. I know it isn't just like what you are looking for, but we have said before that the internal UI is quite limited. There are a whole other set of limitations on the external and embedded UIs, but we don't live in a perfect world, apparently. -----Original Message----- From: Dan Giambalvo [mailto:danie...@microsoft.com] Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 4:07 PM To: General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset. Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Using a CustomAction to modify a dialog I'm sorry, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how this subscribe model works, and also difficulty figuring out how to fire the appropriate events from within the CustomAction (currently in VBScript.) Can you possibly offer a small bit of XML to demonstrate your thinking? -----Original Message----- From: Blair [mailto:os...@live.com] Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 3:10 PM To: 'General discussion for Windows Installer XML toolset.' Subject: Re: [WiX-users] Using a CustomAction to modify a dialog I've never tried this, but if the text control subscribes to the actiondata event, could your custom action send an actiondata event to it? Let us know how that works. -----Original Message----- From: Dan Giambalvo [mailto:danie...@microsoft.com] Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 2:56 PM To: wix-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [WiX-users] Using a CustomAction to modify a dialog I'm trying to use a CustomAction to do some evaluation, and modify an on-screen Windows Installer dialog. The scenario is this: 1) User enters some text in an edit control 2) User clicks a button which invokes a custom action to evaluate the entered text 3) Custom action completes, and some new text is shown to the user *in the same dialog* I've envisioned two ways of building this: 1) (ideal) Some Text Control lives on the dialog with Text= some property. The CustomAction modifies the property value, and the text control displays the new value. 2) I create a text control for each possible string I want to show all overlapping. The CustomAction either hides/shows the appropriate control, or sets some property which triggers a bunch of show/hide Conditions on each text control. The problem I'm running into is that I can't seem to get Windows Installer to re-evaluate any properties after the custom action ends. For example, I have a button that runs my custom action and it changes the property, but the UI doesn't update. If I spawn a dialog however (by hitting cancel for example) then the UI updates. Does anyone know of a clever way to tickle Windows Installer into re-evaluating properties after the CustomAction ends? Thanks -Dan ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference _______________________________________________ WiX-users mailing list WiX-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wix-users
