Deploy Any File Type using Whidbey Click Once

Originally posted on geekswithblogs.net

One of the great things about Whidbey is ClickOnce Deployment. At The Corporate Counsel, I use it to deploy rich client internal applications.

ClickOnce can be used to not only deploy .NET applications, but also to deploy files. Yesterday, I deployed an Access adp application to our organization. To do so, I simply…

• Create a Console Application
• Add the adp file to the project and set it as Content
• Write a bootstrapper application in the Main method
• Configure the ClickOnce deployment

Here is the bootstrap…

#region Using directives
	using System;
	using System.Diagnostics;
#endregion

namespace AdpApplication {
	class Program {
			static void Main(string[] args) {
			System.Diagnostics.Process p = new Process();
			p.StartInfo.FileName = "./file.adp";
			p.Start();
		}
	}
}

Nice and easy. Also, if you are using a web server to deploy the file, remember to set the MIME type.