Deploy without overwriting the DB?

[sjordi 38]

Hi all,
A generic question. I'm deploying my apps with an embedded SQLite DB. Each time I compile/deploy, that existing on device DB file is overwritten by the default one.

It's fine for development. But how do you actually proceed if you want to deploy an update? If a user has the app already with personal data, I don't want her/him to lose that data.

 

Testing whether the DB already exists is not possible since it's deployed each time within the new binary.

One way would be to have all the code to check whether the DB exists. If not, programmatically create it and fill it with sample data. If it does, just check its version and apply possible structure upgrades? But it feels like this would embark a lot of code that may not really be useful.

 

How do you guys deploy news versions of your apps without overwriting exists DBs? I especially think about iOS and Android devices.

 

Thanks for any light.

Steve

[Uwe Raabe 1871]

When you add System.StartUpCopy to the project, all files deployed to the StartUp subfolder of the app are copied to the Home directory on startup - if they don't exist there.

[sjordi 38]

Wow, never ever encountered this! Thanks a thousands
I'll investigate this a bit further more, but it looks like it does exactly what I need...
Thanks a lot.

[sjordi 38]

Actually, I don't find it. It's not known from the compiler, and I have no trace whatsover of any file that looks like it besides a DCU file... but not seen
I'm under Alexandria...

Docwiki at Embarcadero doesn't reference it either... nor does the help...

I think I'm missing something.

Edited May 1, 2022 by sjordi

[Vandrovnik 202]

11 minutes ago, sjordi said:

Actually, I don't find it. It's not known from the compiler, and I have no trace whatsover of any file that looks like it besides a DCU file... but not seen
I'm under Alexandria...

Docwiki at Embarcadero doesn't reference it either... nor does the help...

I think I'm missing something.

 

In Delphi 11, it is in C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\Studio\22.0\source\rtl\common\System.StartUpCopy.pas in my installation.

Help and doc - ehm... Did not find them.

[sjordi 38]

ok,

I think I faced a border effect... I copied the System.StartUpCopy from here and pasted it into my IDE.
Didn't work. Some extra characters? No idea. Then, I erased it, typed System. and saw StartupCopy in the completion list, selected it and still, the IDE was complaining, not even possible to compile.
Then I typed it in manually and it was fine.

Just tried to redeploy my app and I correctly kept my actual data. Cool

 

Thanks all.

Steve