Writing a config or temp file in Plugins folder

notareal

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% ?