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Best practice on how to include sample downloads

Paul G

12 August 2010 10:22

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I have samples that I include in the xml documentation which is picked up by DocX.  What is the best practice on how to include sample downloads?

I have been using relative URLs to a samples dir which is good for different version builds and staging tests.

 

The problem is with a chm build. 

 

I do not want to include the samples within the docX project because their sizes are huge which would considerably increase the chm size.

 

But with a relative location the chm file will choke on that clicked link.

 

I am considering entering the full URL

 

For example from:

      /// <remarks>

      /// Download <a href="samples/Sample.zip">sample</a>

      /// </remarks>

To

      /// <remarks>

      /// Download <a href="http://mysite.com/samples/Sample.zip">sample</a>

      /// </remarks>

Paul

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4 comments

• 0
  
  Permanently deleted user 12 August 2010 15:50

  You could define a custom project property (e.g. SamplePath) and then use that in place of the path portion of the sample link. You could then override that in different profiles. So your links would look like this:

  <a href="%%samplepath%%/Sample.zip">sample</a>

  .. and your custom project property would have a value of "samples" in a profile where you were including the samples in a relative path and would have a value of "http://mysite.com/samples" in your CHM profile.

• 0
  
  Paul G 13 August 2010 09:03

  Close.  Is there something to indicate that a property should be empty?

  When I set chm build SamplePath property to http://mysite.com/ and use:

        /// <remarks>

        /// <a href= "%%SamplePath%%samples/Sample.zip"> Download sample</a>

  then everything is fine – I get http://mysite.com/samples/Sample.zip

   

  I want to keep the other builds relative so I left those SamplePath property builds empty expecting to see the href resolve to samples/Sample.zip to give me http://PreProduction/samples/Sample.zip

   

  Instead I get http://PreProduction/%7BDiscard%7Dsamples/Sample.zip

   

  Thoughts?

   

  Paul

• 0
  
  Permanently deleted user 13 August 2010 09:16

  This sounds like it might be a bug - I'll take a look at that here. As a workaround you could define the property as "./" instead of empty.

• 0
  
  Paul G 13 August 2010 09:18

  Build just finished and the ./ workaround worked like a charm.

  Paul