Writing a config or temp file in Plugins folder

[tomasz]

I have a big headache trying to save a config file in 'Plugins/MyPlugin' folder.
I work always as an administrator on my computer and have full right to the folder, but many plugin users don't.
Moreover.. under Win Vista \ 7 there is the worst thing on the Earth .. the UAC. I really hate it.

Is there a way to successfully save a file into Plugins whatever permissions are there or at least help users grant such a permission to themselves - like starting folder properties window?

Even when I would give an user an option to select a different, writable folder, I have to save this location in a config file somehow!

[Pixero]

@unknownuser said:

Moreover.. under Win Vista \ 7 there is the worst thing on the Earth .. the UAC. I really hate it.

Me too. I work as administrator too, and even if I have UAC off, quite often when trying to save something from the internet (IE) says I dont have write permission. Then if I try again I can and it overwrites a dummy 0kb file with a real sized file. Any ideas?

Not a solution to your question, but for people who cant stand UAC is to use the free TweakUAC to turn it off.
I had a drive that "dissapeared" and Vista said it wasn't formatted...tried hard until I turned UAC off. Then it all came back.
If you're interested you can read about my struggle here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=17248

[thomthom]

hm... My Selection Toys write to a config file in its subfolder - I don't recall any trouble with that when I ran it on my Notebook with UAC enabled...

@unknownuser said:

Even when I would give an user an option to select a different, writable folder, I have to save this location in a config file somehow!

Sketchup.write_default ?

[thomthom]

@thomthom said:

hm... My Selection Toys write to a config file in its subfolder - I don't recall any trouble with that when I ran it on my Notebook with UAC enabled...

Mind you - the account was still an administrator account - I have never tried a User account...

[notareal]

@thomthom said:

@thomthom said:

hm... My Selection Toys write to a config file in its subfolder - I don't recall any trouble with that when I ran it on my Notebook with UAC enabled...

Mind you - the account was still an administrator account - I have never tried a User account...

I think there many that struggles with this issue (administrated environments). For some running as administrator is simply impossible and/or against corporate security policy.

[thomthom]

So the issue here is users without admin privileges won't be able to run plugins that need to write to the plugins folder?

[notareal]

@thomthom said:

So the issue here is users without admin privileges won't be able to run plugins that need to write to the plugins folder?

Yes. It's simply a no good route in Vista/win7 (possibly in XP too), if a strict security policy is in use - user cannot write anything in application folders. It can even be restricted from admins (by group policy).

[Chris Fullmer]

@notareal said:

if a strict security policy is in use - user cannot write anything in application folders.

So what folder does Windows expect people should be able to write to? - somewhere in the users folders probably, right? Could you set it up to write to a special folder in the users MyDocuments or something? And then like Thom suggests, use write_default to save the location of the file.

[thomthom]

You'd have to make a Win32 API call to get the correct path.

What about OSX, any restriction there?

[jeff hammond]

@thomthom said:

What about OSX, any restriction there?

yeah, there are restrictions there.
for instance, using fredoscale as an example (which has the default parameter file), i can only change those defaults from my admin account.. if i try doing it from a user acct then the changes don't stick.
i can however, as an admin, give the user acct. read/write permissions to the entire plugin folder or specific files in which case a user can make changes to fredoscale's parameters which will affect both the user's sketchup and the admin's sketchup.

[and if i remember correctly, there were some problems with the fredoscale.def file being created in the first place when someone was trying to install from a non-admin acct.. ie- it didn't work]

[TIG]

Why does it have to be a file made in the ../Plugins/ folder ?
There are many places that a user will have access rights - e.g. C:\Temp ?
You can also get the User's very own 'TEMP' folder using ENV["TEMP"] for PC or ENV["TMPDIR"] for MAC - e.g. C:\Users\TIG\AppData\Local\Temp

[thomthom]

The temp folder doesn't work well when you want to store persistent config files.

[thomthom]

What we need in the API is a method that will return the path to where one can store application data on each OS.

[thomthom]

On Win7 I see this key:
LOCALAPPDATA - C:\Users\Thomas\AppData\Local

Is there something on OSX?

[TIG]

My ENV example combined with a simple OS test lets you find the User's own TEMP file...
The PC's ENV["LOCALAPPDATA"] would allow you to then make a specific sub-folder to contain the config file - on a MAC what is it ?

BUT you can save config info in other ways...

To save them
If it's entity specific use entity.set_attributes(dict,key,value)
If it's model specific use model.set_attributes(dict,key,value)
If it's Sketchup specific use Sketchup.write_default(section,variable,value)
[if it's a file-path with '' you'll need to use tr("\\","/") before writing it]

To retrieve them use
entity.get_attributes(dict,key,default)
model.get_attributes(dict,key,default)
Sketchup.read_default(section,variable,value)
[if it's a file-path you'll need to use tr("/","\\") after reading it and before using it]

[thomthom]

@tig said:

[if it's a file-path with '' you'll need to use tr("\","/") before writing it]

Or use File.expand_path

@unknownuser said:

I have to try if once again. If my memory doesn't deceive me I haven't had good results with it in the past.

I use it quite frequently. But beware that it doesn't handle Length objects well - so convert them into floats first. (I made a wrapper to handle conversion of Length and Symbol for write/read_default)

[tomasz]

@tig said:

Why does it have to be a file made in the ../Plugins/ folder ?

It doesn't have to be. If I would have just a chance to write a path to the config file then it would be ok...
I have forgotten about Sketchup.write_default. Thanks Thomas!
I have to try it once again. If my memory doesn't deceive me I haven't had good results with it in the past.

[TIG]

Note that read/write_defaults is best with Strings - convert then from/to Float [or whatever] afterwards...

[thomthom]

works fine with floats, integers, even arrays in my experience...

[notareal]

For windows %appdata% ?