I managed to finish the documentation and demo app for the Core class today. The Core class is the base class that all the other classes inherit from. I moved two methods up from the WindowsClass to it today. One that gets the last API error and one that returns a formatted string for the last api error. Those methods belonged in the core class, but were left out when I created the core class.
You can now view the Icetips Utilities documentation online at http://www.icetips.com/manuals/utilities/index.html
The SetFileAttrib method was also not complete so I finished it. It, along with the GetFileAttrib method, let you set or get the read-only, hidden and system properties of files, which comes in handy if you need to delete read-only files or hidden files that your software creates. With these methods you can gain full control over the file attributes.
The Core class also contains a new method, IsFileInUse which attempts to open a file with write access to determine if the file can be accessed. If it fails, the method deems the file to be in use by some other program or process.
One other new method in the Core class is the CreateGUID method. It creates a GUID which is useful for a lot of things. We use GUIDs extensively in the Build Automator to link XML files together.
IsFolder is another very useful new method to determine if a path is a valid path or if the last part of it is a filename. For example you could pass something like this to a method expecting either a path or a filename: 'C:\Temp\SomeThing' Does this mean that SomeThing is a path witout a trailing backslash or is it a file without extension, i.e. should it be 'C:\Temp\Something\' or C:\Temp\Something.' The IsFolder will return true if 'Something' is a folder and false if it is a file. This is important when using methods such as GetFilePart because if the trailing backslash is missing from a path it would interpret 'SomeThing' as a file and that could cause all kinds of problems.
Tomorrow morning I will build a new install for the classes, templates and demos and they will be out sometime tomorrow, depening on how much work I need to do on the install process. Now of course I have the Build Automator to help me with that process. Building the install for the Icetips Utilities was actually the thing that caused me to get the idea for the Build Automator in the first place.
Arnor Baldvinsson
