Automate Self-Extractor

Question

I am a little new to programming so please bear with me. I create a lot of self-extractors that I upload to a ftp site which my clients then download (with the self-extractor putting the files I zipped up to the right spot). I am trying to automate this process on my end since it is rather repetitive.

I think I can figure out how to create the zip and how to upload the file once created but I cannot figure out how to create use winzip se to create a self-extractor from the created zip file. WinZip has a command line interface but WinZIp SE apparently does not.

Any help would be appreciated...I am planning on writing this code in java btw.

Thanks.

Answer 1

According to What are the differences between the full WinZip Self-Extractor and the Personal Edition version?

Self-extracting files can be created from the command line.

That being said, I'm not sure I would use Java to automate the tasks you are describing, it's not the best tool for that IMHO. I'd rather use shell scripting.

Update: (answering a comment from the OP) I'm really not a Windows specialist but I think that Windows PowerShell might be appropriate for the job (and it can be used to query a MS Access database).

Answer 2

If you need to compress and decompress zip archives, just use any other command line utility, which you will call from your Java app. For example zip, and unzip: http://www.info-zip.org/

Answer 3

7-zip is free and can do this on the command line, meaning you can make a batch script. 7za a -sfx MySelfExtractingzip.exe MyFolderContainingFiles/