SDA Control

Properties Methods Events Config Settings Errors

The SDA control can be used to create a self-decrypting archive which will run natively on Windows platforms.

Syntax

SDA

Remarks

The control uses the Deflate algorithm specified in RFC 1951 for compression, and then creates a self-decrypting executable archive. This exe will bring up a dialog that will allow the user to select the target directory in which to decompress the files. There is also an optional splash screen that may be displayed before decompression. The text for this splash screen may be set with the BannerText property. You can also set the text that appears on the title bar of each dialog box using the CaptionText property.

Example (Creating a Self-Decrypting Archive)

control.ArchiveFile = "c:\test.exe" control.RecurseSubdirectories = true control.SourceDirectory = "c:\foo\" control.CaptionText = "Testing SDA" control.BannerText = "Press continue to decompress the archive." control.CreateSDA() control.ArchiveFile = "c:\test.exe" control.SourceFile = "c:\foo\bar.dat" control.CaptionText = "Testing SDA" control.BannerText = "Press continue to decompress the archive." control.CreateSDA()

Note: When creating a self-decrypting archive which exceeds 4 GB or more of uncompressed data or which contains more than 64K files, the control will create a 64-bit archive.

The self-decrypting archive that is created by the SDA control is a Windows application. However, there are command line options available if you wish to batch multiple files. The options are:


Option Name	Description
targetpath	Path to decompress the archive to. This overrides the ExtractToPath. "." indicates the current directory (if no ExtractToPath was specified and no `targetpath` is given, the archive is decompressed to the current directory).
overwrite	If set to true, the archive will automatically overwrite existing files (thus suppressing the message box asking you to overwrite or not)
displaymessage	If set to false, it will suppress the display of the "Extraction Complete" message after the archive has finished (this may also be accomplished by setting the CompleteMessage config setting to "").
openfile	If set to false, this option will override opening the file indicated by FileToExecute. (Alternatively, set FileToExecute to "").
password	The password used to decrypt the archive. If the archive is not encrypted this option is ignored. However if the archive is encrypted and no password is supplied, decompression will fail.

For example, the following suppresses all questions and message boxes, and decompress to the current directory, use the following options: SDAExtractor /targetpath="." /overwrite=1 /displaymessage=0 /openfile=0 /password=pass

Note that if you run the self-decrypting archive with any command line options, the pop up message box containing the BannerText will be suppressed.

Property List

The following is the full list of the properties of the control with short descriptions. Click on the links for further details.


ArchiveFile	The name of the self-decrypting archive to create.
BannerText	Optional banner text to show before the self-extraction starts.
CaptionText	Optional caption (title) text for the self-extractor dialogs.
CompressionLevel	The compression level to use.
ExtractToPath	Optional target directory for the self-extractor.
FileToExecute	Optional file to execute (open) after the archive is extracted.
Password	An optional password for the self-decrypting archive.
RecurseSubdirectories	Whether or not to recurse into subdirectories during archive creation.
SourceDirectory	Directory to be compressed into a self-decrypting archive.
SourceFile	File to be compressed into a self-decrypting archive.

Method List

The following is the full list of the methods of the control with short descriptions. Click on the links for further details.


Config	Sets or retrieves a configuration setting.
CreateSDA	Compresses the files and creates a self-decrypting archive.
Reset	Resets the control.

Event List

The following is the full list of the events fired by the control with short descriptions. Click on the links for further details.


Error	Information about non-fatal errors.
Progress	Fired as progress is made.
Status	Shows the progress of the operation.

Config Settings

The following is a list of config settings for the control with short descriptions. Click on the links for further details.


CompleteMessage	Message to notify user that extraction has finished normally.
ExtractorStub	Path to optional self-extractor executable stub.
FileToExecuteParams	List of parameters to pass to FileToExecute.
InstallationMode	This setting will install to ExtractToPath, run FileToExecute, and then remove the extracted files.
LogLevel	Specifies the level of detail that is logged.
RequireAdminPrivs	Specifies whether the created executable requires Administrator privileges.
SilentExtraction	Specifies whether the archive should hide all UI interaction while extracting.
CodePage	The system code page used for Unicode to Multibyte translations.
MaskSensitiveData	Whether sensitive data is masked in log messages.
UseInternalSecurityAPI	Whether or not to use the system security libraries or an internal implementation.

ArchiveFile Property (SDA Control)

The name of the self-decrypting archive to create.

Syntax

sdacontrol.ArchiveFile[=string]

Default Value

Remarks

This property specifies the name of the archive to be written when CreateSDA is called. Any pre-existing archive file will be overwritten.

The filename may be specified with or without a path. Paths may be relative or absolute, and should be specified in the format native to the host operating system. The filename should be specified with the appropriate ".exe" extension. An extension will not automatically be appended by the control.

If the file cannot be written a trappable error will be generated.

Example (Creating a Self-Decrypting Archive)

Note: When creating a self-decrypting archive which exceeds 4 GB or more of uncompressed data or which contains more than 64K files, the control will create a 64-bit archive.

Data Type

String

BannerText Property (SDA Control)

Optional banner text to show before the self-extraction starts.

Syntax

sdacontrol.BannerText[=string]

Default Value

Remarks

If this property is set, a dialog box will pop up displaying the contents of this property as soon as the SDA executable is run. If this property is set to an empty string (default) no banner dialog will be displayed.

Example (Creating a Self-Decrypting Archive)

Data Type

String

CaptionText Property (SDA Control)

Optional caption (title) text for the self-extractor dialogs.

Syntax

sdacontrol.CaptionText[=string]

Default Value

Remarks

This property contains the text which will appear on the title bar of the dialog boxes that appear when running the SDA executable file. If this property is not set, "IPWorks PG Self Extractor - www.nsoftware.com" will appear in the title bar.

Example (Creating a Self-Decrypting Archive)

Data Type

String

CompressionLevel Property (SDA Control)

The compression level to use.

Syntax

sdacontrol.CompressionLevel[=integer]

Default Value

Remarks

This property specifies the level of compression to be used, between 0 and 6. Higher values will cause the control to compress better; lower values will cause the control to compress faster. A value of 0 will store the file without compression.

Data Type

Integer

ExtractToPath Property (SDA Control)

Optional target directory for the self-extractor.

Syntax

sdacontrol.ExtractToPath[=string]

Default Value

Remarks

If set to empty string (default), the self-extractor will attempt to extract files into a subdirectory of the directory it is being executed from.

The name of the subdirectory is derived from the name of the self-decrypting archive by removing its extension.

Data Type

String

FileToExecute Property (SDA Control)

Optional file to execute (open) after the archive is extracted.

Syntax

sdacontrol.FileToExecute[=string]

Default Value

"."

Remarks

This property specifies an executable file which will be run after the archive has completed decompressing. This must be a relative path to a file located within ExtractToPath. If this property is set to ".", the folder to which the archive has been decompressed will open in Windows Explorer. If this property is set to "" (empty string), the extractor will close and take no action.

Data Type

String

Password Property (SDA Control)

An optional password for the self-decrypting archive.

Syntax

sdacontrol.Password[=string]

Default Value

Remarks

This property specifies a case-sensitive password used to encrypt or decrypt the archive. If set to an empty string (default), no encryption is used.

The maximum supported length of the password is 128 characters.

Example (compressing an SDA archive):

control.ArchiveFile = "c:\test.exe" control.RecurseSubdirectories = true control.SourceDirectory = "c:\foo" control.Password = "nsoftware" control.CreateSDA()

Data Type

String

RecurseSubdirectories Property (SDA Control)

Whether or not to recurse into subdirectories during archive creation.

Syntax

sdacontrol.RecurseSubdirectories[=boolean]

Default Value

True

Remarks

If this property is set to true, when calling CreateSDA the control will recurse into all the subdirectories under SourceDirectory and include them in the self extracting archive. If this property is false, only the files in SourceDirectory will be included in the archive.

Data Type

Boolean

SourceDirectory Property (SDA Control)

Directory to be compressed into a self-decrypting archive.

Syntax

sdacontrol.SourceDirectory[=string]

Default Value

Remarks

This property specifies the name of the directory containing the files to be compressed. This may be a local or absolute path. If the RecurseSubdirectories property is true, all the subdirectories under SourceDirectory will be recursed into, and those files will also be compressed.

Example (Creating a Self-Decrypting Archive)

Data Type

String

SourceFile Property (SDA Control)

File to be compressed into a self-decrypting archive.

Syntax

sdacontrol.SourceFile[=string]

Default Value

Remarks

This property specifies the name of a single file to be compressed. When both SourceFile and SourceDirectory are set, only SourceDirectory is used.

Example (Creating a Self-Decrypting Archive)

Data Type

String

Config Method (SDA Control)

Sets or retrieves a configuration setting.

Syntax

sdacontrol.Config ConfigurationString

Remarks

Config is a generic method available in every control. It is used to set and retrieve configuration settings for the control.

These settings are similar in functionality to properties, but they are rarely used. In order to avoid "polluting" the property namespace of the control, access to these internal properties is provided through the Config method.

To set a configuration setting named PROPERTY, you must call Config("PROPERTY=VALUE"), where VALUE is the value of the setting expressed as a string. For boolean values, use the strings "True", "False", "0", "1", "Yes", or "No" (case does not matter).

To read (query) the value of a configuration setting, you must call Config("PROPERTY"). The value will be returned as a string.

CreateSDA Method (SDA Control)

Compresses the files and creates a self-decrypting archive.

Syntax

sdacontrol.CreateSDA

Remarks

Invoking CreateSDA creates the archive specified by ArchiveFile. When the method is called, all files specified by SourceDirectory will be compressed and written to ArchiveFile. If RecurseSubdirectories is true, all the subdirectories under SourceDirectory and the files they contain will also be compressed and written to ArchiveFile.

If ArchiveFile exists when you call CreateSDA it will be overwritten.

As the files in SourceDirectory are being compressed, the Progress event will fire periodically to indicate how many bytes have been processed and the percentage of compression that has been completed.

To include your own custom text on the title bar of all of the self-extractor dialog boxes, set the CaptionText before calling CreateSDA. Setting the optional BannerText property will cause a small dialog to pop up when the self-extractor is run. You can put in a description of the contents, instructions, or any text you like.

Example (Creating a Self-Decrypting Archive)

Note: When creating a self-decrypting archive which exceeds 4 GB or more of uncompressed data or which contains more than 64K files, the control will create a 64-bit archive.

The self-decrypting archive that is created by the SDA control is a Windows application. However, there are command line options available if you wish to batch multiple files. The options are:


Option Name	Description
targetpath	Path to decompress the archive to. This overrides the ExtractToPath. "." indicates the current directory (if no ExtractToPath was specified and no `targetpath` is given, the archive is decompressed to the current directory).
overwrite	If set to true, the archive will automatically overwrite existing files (thus suppressing the message box asking you to overwrite or not)
displaymessage	If set to false, it will suppress the display of the "Extraction Complete" message after the archive has finished (this may also be accomplished by setting the CompleteMessage config setting to "").
openfile	If set to false, this option will override opening the file indicated by FileToExecute. (Alternatively, set FileToExecute to "").
password	The password used to decrypt the archive. If the archive is not encrypted this option is ignored. However if the archive is encrypted and no password is supplied, decompression will fail.

Note that if you run the self-decrypting archive with any command line options, the pop up message box containing the BannerText will be suppressed.

Reset Method (SDA Control)

Resets the control.

Syntax

sdacontrol.Reset

Remarks

Reset resets the state of the control. All properties will be set to their default values, and any files open will be closed.

Error Event (SDA Control)

Information about non-fatal errors.

Syntax

Sub sdacontrol_Error(Description As String, ErrorCode As Integer, Index As Integer, Filename As String, Ignore As Boolean)

Remarks

The Error event is fired when non-fatal errors occur during compression or decompression. Note that if this event is fired during decompression this may indicate that the archive is corrupt.

By default these errors will cause the component to fail with an exception. The exception may be overridden by setting Ignore to true. This will cause the error to be ignored, the file will be skipped if necessary, and the control will continue operation.

ErrorCode will correspond to one of the following errors:


1	Bad or missing CRC-32 checksum.
2	Failed to set creation date of a file.
111	Can't open file for read (skipping).

Description contains a textual description of the error. Index and Filename contain the array index (where appropriate) and filename of the file being processed at the time of the error.

Progress Event (SDA Control)

Fired as progress is made.

Syntax

Sub sdacontrol_Progress(Filename As String, BytesProcessed As Long64, PercentProcessed As Integer)

Remarks

The Progress event is automatically fired as compression is performed.

Filename contains the name of the file being written.

BytesProcessed contains the total number of uncompressed bytes processed.

PercentProcessed contains the percent of uncompressed bytes processed, corresponding roughly to the running time of the operation.

Status Event (SDA Control)

Shows the progress of the operation.

Syntax

Sub sdacontrol_Status(Message As String)

Remarks

The event is fired for informational and logging purposes only. It may be used to track the progress of an operation.

The level of detail is controlled by the LogLevel setting.

Config Settings (SDA Control)

The control accepts one or more of the following configuration settings. Configuration settings are similar in functionality to properties, but they are rarely used. In order to avoid "polluting" the property namespace of the control, access to these internal properties is provided through the Config method.

SDA Config Settings

CompleteMessage: Message to notify user that extraction has finished normally.

When the self-decrypting executable created by this control successfully finishes extracting the files contained within itself, it may optionally display a Message Box indicating that it's finished. By default, the message "Extraction Complete." is displayed. You may change this to your own custom message. However, any message longer than 400 characters will be truncated. To disable this message, set the CompleteMessage configuration setting to "" (empty string).

ExtractorStub: Path to optional self-extractor executable stub.

Normally the control loads a self-extractor stub from an internal resource and uses it to create the self-decrypting executable.

If a path is specified in this setting, the file indicated by that path is used instead.

This setting allows you to specify a custom self-extractor. The compiled self-extractor stub is available on demand. Resources such as icons and text may then be modified.

This may also be used to specify if the resulting executable should be 32 bit or 64 bit by setting this to either "*32bit" or "*64bit".

FileToExecuteParams: List of parameters to pass to FileToExecute.

This setting allows you to pass command-line parameters to the executable file indicated by FileToExecute. Parameters should be in the form of a space-separated list.

InstallationMode: This setting will install to ExtractToPath, run FileToExecute, and then remove the extracted files.

Is set to true, this setting makes the self-extractor behave as an installer by installing to a temp directory, running the desired executable, and removing the extracted files upon completion. The default value is false.

LogLevel: Specifies the level of detail that is logged.

This setting controls the level of detail that is logged through the Status event. Possible values are:


0 (none)	No events are logged.
1 (info - default)	Informational events are logged.
2 (verbose)	Detailed data is logged.
3 (debug)	Debug data is logged.

RequireAdminPrivs: Specifies whether the created executable requires Administrator privileges.

This setting specifies whether the executable created by the control requires Administrator privileges to execute.

This setting is false by default.

SilentExtraction: Specifies whether the archive should hide all UI interaction while extracting.

This setting specifies whether to hide the progress bar and success window when the archive executable is run. Setting this config to true is equivalent to passing the '/s' command-line parameter to the archive executable.

This setting is false by default.

Base Config Settings

CodePage: The system code page used for Unicode to Multibyte translations.

The default code page is Unicode UTF-8 (65001).

The following is a list of valid code page identifiers:


Identifier	Name
037	IBM EBCDIC - U.S./Canada
437	OEM - United States
500	IBM EBCDIC - International
708	Arabic - ASMO 708
709	Arabic - ASMO 449+, BCON V4
710	Arabic - Transparent Arabic
720	Arabic - Transparent ASMO
737	OEM - Greek (formerly 437G)
775	OEM - Baltic
850	OEM - Multilingual Latin I
852	OEM - Latin II
855	OEM - Cyrillic (primarily Russian)
857	OEM - Turkish
858	OEM - Multilingual Latin I + Euro symbol
860	OEM - Portuguese
861	OEM - Icelandic
862	OEM - Hebrew
863	OEM - Canadian-French
864	OEM - Arabic
865	OEM - Nordic
866	OEM - Russian
869	OEM - Modern Greek
870	IBM EBCDIC - Multilingual/ROECE (Latin-2)
874	ANSI/OEM - Thai (same as 28605, ISO 8859-15)
875	IBM EBCDIC - Modern Greek
932	ANSI/OEM - Japanese, Shift-JIS
936	ANSI/OEM - Simplified Chinese (PRC, Singapore)
949	ANSI/OEM - Korean (Unified Hangul Code)
950	ANSI/OEM - Traditional Chinese (Taiwan; Hong Kong SAR, PRC)
1026	IBM EBCDIC - Turkish (Latin-5)
1047	IBM EBCDIC - Latin 1/Open System
1140	IBM EBCDIC - U.S./Canada (037 + Euro symbol)
1141	IBM EBCDIC - Germany (20273 + Euro symbol)
1142	IBM EBCDIC - Denmark/Norway (20277 + Euro symbol)
1143	IBM EBCDIC - Finland/Sweden (20278 + Euro symbol)
1144	IBM EBCDIC - Italy (20280 + Euro symbol)
1145	IBM EBCDIC - Latin America/Spain (20284 + Euro symbol)
1146	IBM EBCDIC - United Kingdom (20285 + Euro symbol)
1147	IBM EBCDIC - France (20297 + Euro symbol)
1148	IBM EBCDIC - International (500 + Euro symbol)
1149	IBM EBCDIC - Icelandic (20871 + Euro symbol)
1200	Unicode UCS-2 Little-Endian (BMP of ISO 10646)
1201	Unicode UCS-2 Big-Endian
1250	ANSI - Central European
1251	ANSI - Cyrillic
1252	ANSI - Latin I
1253	ANSI - Greek
1254	ANSI - Turkish
1255	ANSI - Hebrew
1256	ANSI - Arabic
1257	ANSI - Baltic
1258	ANSI/OEM - Vietnamese
1361	Korean (Johab)
10000	MAC - Roman
10001	MAC - Japanese
10002	MAC - Traditional Chinese (Big5)
10003	MAC - Korean
10004	MAC - Arabic
10005	MAC - Hebrew
10006	MAC - Greek I
10007	MAC - Cyrillic
10008	MAC - Simplified Chinese (GB 2312)
10010	MAC - Romania
10017	MAC - Ukraine
10021	MAC - Thai
10029	MAC - Latin II
10079	MAC - Icelandic
10081	MAC - Turkish
10082	MAC - Croatia
12000	Unicode UCS-4 Little-Endian
12001	Unicode UCS-4 Big-Endian
20000	CNS - Taiwan
20001	TCA - Taiwan
20002	Eten - Taiwan
20003	IBM5550 - Taiwan
20004	TeleText - Taiwan
20005	Wang - Taiwan
20105	IA5 IRV International Alphabet No. 5 (7-bit)
20106	IA5 German (7-bit)
20107	IA5 Swedish (7-bit)
20108	IA5 Norwegian (7-bit)
20127	US-ASCII (7-bit)
20261	T.61
20269	ISO 6937 Non-Spacing Accent
20273	IBM EBCDIC - Germany
20277	IBM EBCDIC - Denmark/Norway
20278	IBM EBCDIC - Finland/Sweden
20280	IBM EBCDIC - Italy
20284	IBM EBCDIC - Latin America/Spain
20285	IBM EBCDIC - United Kingdom
20290	IBM EBCDIC - Japanese Katakana Extended
20297	IBM EBCDIC - France
20420	IBM EBCDIC - Arabic
20423	IBM EBCDIC - Greek
20424	IBM EBCDIC - Hebrew
20833	IBM EBCDIC - Korean Extended
20838	IBM EBCDIC - Thai
20866	Russian - KOI8-R
20871	IBM EBCDIC - Icelandic
20880	IBM EBCDIC - Cyrillic (Russian)
20905	IBM EBCDIC - Turkish
20924	IBM EBCDIC - Latin-1/Open System (1047 + Euro symbol)
20932	JIS X 0208-1990 & 0121-1990
20936	Simplified Chinese (GB2312)
21025	IBM EBCDIC - Cyrillic (Serbian, Bulgarian)
21027	Extended Alpha Lowercase
21866	Ukrainian (KOI8-U)
28591	ISO 8859-1 Latin I
28592	ISO 8859-2 Central Europe
28593	ISO 8859-3 Latin 3
28594	ISO 8859-4 Baltic
28595	ISO 8859-5 Cyrillic
28596	ISO 8859-6 Arabic
28597	ISO 8859-7 Greek
28598	ISO 8859-8 Hebrew
28599	ISO 8859-9 Latin 5
28605	ISO 8859-15 Latin 9
29001	Europa 3
38598	ISO 8859-8 Hebrew
50220	ISO 2022 Japanese with no halfwidth Katakana
50221	ISO 2022 Japanese with halfwidth Katakana
50222	ISO 2022 Japanese JIS X 0201-1989
50225	ISO 2022 Korean
50227	ISO 2022 Simplified Chinese
50229	ISO 2022 Traditional Chinese
50930	Japanese (Katakana) Extended
50931	US/Canada and Japanese
50933	Korean Extended and Korean
50935	Simplified Chinese Extended and Simplified Chinese
50936	Simplified Chinese
50937	US/Canada and Traditional Chinese
50939	Japanese (Latin) Extended and Japanese
51932	EUC - Japanese
51936	EUC - Simplified Chinese
51949	EUC - Korean
51950	EUC - Traditional Chinese
52936	HZ-GB2312 Simplified Chinese
54936	Windows XP: GB18030 Simplified Chinese (4 Byte)
57002	ISCII Devanagari
57003	ISCII Bengali
57004	ISCII Tamil
57005	ISCII Telugu
57006	ISCII Assamese
57007	ISCII Oriya
57008	ISCII Kannada
57009	ISCII Malayalam
57010	ISCII Gujarati
57011	ISCII Punjabi
65000	Unicode UTF-7
65001	Unicode UTF-8

The following is a list of valid code page identifiers for Mac OS only:


Identifier	Name
1	ASCII
2	NEXTSTEP
3	JapaneseEUC
4	UTF8
5	ISOLatin1
6	Symbol
7	NonLossyASCII
8	ShiftJIS
9	ISOLatin2
10	Unicode
11	WindowsCP1251
12	WindowsCP1252
13	WindowsCP1253
14	WindowsCP1254
15	WindowsCP1250
21	ISO2022JP
30	MacOSRoman
10	UTF16String
0x90000100	UTF16BigEndian
0x94000100	UTF16LittleEndian
0x8c000100	UTF32String
0x98000100	UTF32BigEndian
0x9c000100	UTF32LittleEndian
65536	Proprietary

MaskSensitiveData: Whether sensitive data is masked in log messages.

In certain circumstances it may be beneficial to mask sensitive data, like passwords, in log messages. Set this to to mask sensitive data. The default is .

This setting only works on these controls: AS3Receiver, AS3Sender, Atom, Client(3DS), FTP, FTPServer, IMAP, OFTPClient, SSHClient, SCP, Server(3DS), Sexec, SFTP, SFTPServer, SSHServer, TCPClient, TCPServer.

UseInternalSecurityAPI: Whether or not to use the system security libraries or an internal implementation.

When set to , the control will use the system security libraries by default to perform cryptographic functions where applicable.

Setting this configuration setting to tells the control to use the internal implementation instead of using the system security libraries.

This setting is set to by default on all platforms.

Trappable Errors (SDA Control)

Errors

The following errors may be generated by the control. Note that frequently the error message will contain more specific information than what is listed here.

Note that some non-fatal errors may be trapped and explicitly ignored in the Error event. This will allow the control to continue operation even in case of error.

SDA Errors

20105	Password is required to create SDA.
20112	Can't open file for read.
20113	Can't open file for write.
20116	Can't create empty archive.
20119	The maximum size of the archive has been exceeded.
20120	The archive must be specified.
20121	The component is busy.
20151	An I/O error has occurred (details follow).
20151	Cannot find resource (details follow).
20151	Cannot update resource (details follow).