Appcast

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Generating an Appcast

An appcast is a special RSS feed that SparkleDotNET uses to find updates to your application. You can put every single update you release into your appcast, and SparkleDotNET will update your application to the latest usable version. You can only include the latest update if you prefer.

Example Appcast

#!xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0" 
xmlns:sparkle="http://www.andymatuschak.org/xml-namespaces/sparkle"
xmlns:sparkleDotNET="http://bitbucket.org/ikenndac/sparkledotnet">
    <channel> 
        <title>Music Rescue Updates</title> 
        <language>en</language> 
        <item> 
            <title>Music Rescue 4.0.13</title> 
            <sparkle:releaseNotesLink>http://dbprocessor.kennettnet.co.uk/MusicRescueNotes/41.html</sparkle:releaseNotesLink>
            <pubDate>Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:00:00 +0000</pubDate> 
            <enclosure sparkle:version="4.0.13" 
			sparkle:shortVersionString="4.0.13" 
			sparkleDotNET:executableType="InstallShieldSetup"
			sparkleDotNET:primaryInstallationFile="musicrescuesetup.exe"
			sparkle:dsaSignature="W8Sm6WqmKvEil+Iho5ad3/dVodVxqyh/z4/67sUWqkSfan/IamMPYQ=="
			url="http://www.kennettnet.co.uk/products/musicrescue/files/musicrescue.exe"
			type="application/octet-stream"
			length="5288007"/> 
        </item> 
    </channel> 
</rss>

Item Child Tags

Four tags are required in each <item> tag. An <item> tag represents a single update.

Tag Name	Description
title	The title of the update.
sparkle:releaseNotesLink	The URL to the release notes for this update. The release notes will be rendered using .NET's web view, so you can use HTML. Sample release notes templates are include with SparkleDotNET.
pubDate	The date/time the update was published.
enclosure	See below.

The Enclosure Tag

The <enclosure> tag contains most of the meat of your appcast items.

Attribute Name	Description
sparkle:version	The version number of the update that SparkleDotNET should use for version comparison.
sparkle:shortVersionString	The version number of the update that SparkleDotNET should show to the user.
sparkleDotNET:executableType	If the update is installed using an .exe file, the kind of .exe it is. The supported values are "InstallShieldSetup" and "InnoSetup" - if your updates are InstallShield or Inno setup installers, mark them as such and SparkleDotNET will launch them in reduced UI mode to streamline the update. Other .exe files will be launched normally.
sparkleDotNET:primaryInstallationFile	If you have multiple files in your download package that could be seen as installers (.msi packages, .exe files, etc), use this attribute to tell SparkleDotNET which file to launch.
sparkle:dsaSignature	The signature for the update, encoded as Base64. See the Signing Your Updates page for details.
url	The URL of the update file to download.
type	The MIME type of the download. If in doubt, leave as application/octet-stream."
length	The size of the update, in bytes.