Availability: Windows.
New in version 2.5.
The msilib supports the creation of Microsoft Installer
(.msi ) files. Because these files often contain an embedded
``cabinet'' file (.cab ), it also exposes an API to create
CAB files. Support for reading .cab files is currently not
implemented; read support for the .msi database is possible.
This package aims to provide complete access to all tables in an
.msi file, therefore, it is a fairly low-level API. Two
primary applications of this package are the distutils
command bdist_msi , and the creation of Python installer
package itself (although that currently uses a different version
of msilib ).
The package contents can be roughly split into four parts:
low-level CAB routines, low-level MSI routines, higher-level
MSI routines, and standard table structures.
FCICreate( |
cabname, files) |
-
Create a new CAB file named cabname. files must
be a list of tuples, each containing the name of the file on
disk, and the name of the file inside the CAB file.
The files are added to the CAB file in the order they appear
in the list. All files are added into a single CAB file,
using the MSZIP compression algorithm.
Callbacks to Python for the various steps of MSI creation
are currently not exposed.
-
Return the string representation of a new unique identifier.
This wraps the Windows API functions UuidCreate and
UuidToString.
OpenDatabase( |
path, persist) |
-
Return a new database object by calling MsiOpenDatabase.
path is the file name of the
MSI file; persist can be one of the constants
MSIDBOPEN_CREATEDIRECT , MSIDBOPEN_CREATE ,
MSIDBOPEN_DIRECT , MSIDBOPEN_READONLY , or
MSIDBOPEN_TRANSACT , and may include the flag
MSIDBOPEN_PATCHFILE . See the Microsoft documentation for
the meaning of these flags; depending on the flags,
an existing database is opened, or a new one created.
-
Return a new record object by calling MSICreateRecord.
count is the number of fields of the record.
init_database( |
name, schema, ProductName, ProductCode, ProductVersion, Manufacturer) |
-
Create and return a new database name, initialize it
with schema, and set the properties ProductName,
ProductCode, ProductVersion, and Manufacturer.
schema must be a module object containing tables and
_Validation_records attributes; typically,
msilib.schema should be used.
The database will contain just the schema and the validation
records when this function returns.
add_data( |
database, records) |
-
Add all records to database. records should
be a list of tuples, each one containing all fields of a record
according to the schema of the table. For optional fields,
None can be passed.
Field values can be int or long numbers, strings, or instances
of the Binary class.
-
Represents entries in the Binary table; inserting such
an object using add_data reads the file named
filename into the table.
add_tables( |
database, module) |
-
Add all table content from module to database.
module must contain an attribute tables
listing all tables for which content should be added,
and one attribute per table that has the actual content.
This is typically used to install the sequence tables.
add_stream( |
database, name, path) |
-
Add the file path into the
_Stream table
of database, with the stream name name.
-
Return a new UUID, in the format that MSI typically
requires (i.e. in curly braces, and with all hexdigits
in upper-case).
Release 2.5.2, documentation updated on 21st February, 2008.
See About this document... for information on suggesting changes.
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