Summary

Synopsis

Discussion

The values for hostname and IP address of the machine on which the install is running can be retrieved by writing a custom bean that uses the methods in the InetAddress class from the Java API. The following sample code demonstrates how this can be done within a custom wizard action.

import com.installshield.wizard.*;
import java.net.*;

public class FindHostName extends WizardAction {
public void execute(WizardBeanEvent event) {
try { /*Store the local host name into a JVM system property "localhost" */
System.setProperty("localhost.name", InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostName());
System.setProperty("localhost.IP", InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostAddress());
System.out.println("The hostname is "+System.getProperty("localhost.name")
+ "and the IP is "+System.getProperty("localhost.IP"));
} catch (UnknownHostException uh) { /* Print error message */
System.out.println("unknown host");
}
}
}

This code stores the hostname and IP address values in Java system properties named localhost.name and localhost.IP. These properties can be referred to in the bean properties of subsequent beans using the string resolver expressions

Additional Information

This example will not work correctly on systems with multiple network interfaces and/or multiple IP addresses. This is due to a limitation in Java's InetAddress class.

The Java2 version 1.4 API provides the class java.net.NetworkInterface, which has the static method getNetworkInterfaces() that allows the retrieval of information for all network interfaces present on a system. This API is safe to use in a custom bean provided that the setup is assured of running on a Java Virtual Machine of version 1.4 or higher. This can be specified by configuring the native distribution launcher to either search for or install a bundled 1.4.x JVM.

More information on the Java InetAdress and NetworkInterface classes can be found at the Sun Java API Web Site.

The article Network Programming with J2SE 1.4 on Sun's Java Web site contains good background information on the networking support provided in the Java2 version 1.4 API.