install4j: how can i pass command line arguments to windows service - install4j

Question

I've created a windows service using install4j and everything works but now I need to pass it command line arguments to the service. I know I can configure them at service creation time in the new service wizard but i was hoping to either pass the arguments to the register service command ie:
myservice.exe --install --arg arg1=val1 --arg arg1=val2 "My Service Name1"
or by putting them in the .vmoptions file like:
-Xmx256m
arg1=val1
arg2=val2
It seems like the only way to do this is to modify my code to pick up the service name via exe4j.launchName and then load some other file or environment variables that has the necessary configuration for that particular service. I've used other service creation tools for java in the past and they all had straightforward support for command line arguments registered by the user.

Answer 1

I know you asked this back in January, but did you ever figure this out?
I don't know where you're sourcing val1, val2 etc from. Are they entered by the user into fields in a form in the installation process? Assuming they are, then this is a similar problem to one I faced a while back.
My approach for this was to have a Configurable Form with the necessary fields (as Text Field objects), and obviously have variables assigned to the values of the text fields (under the 'User Input/Variable Name' category of the text field).
Later in the installation process I had a Display Progress screen with a Run Script action attached to it with some java to achieve what I wanted to do.
There are two 'gotchas' when optionally setting variables in install4j this way. Firstly, the variable HAS to be set no matter what, even if it's just to the empty string. So, if the user leaves a field blank (ie they don't want to pass that argument into the service), you'll still need to provide an empty string to the Run executable or Launch Service task (more in that in a moment) Secondly, arguments can't have spaces - every space-separated argument has to have its own line.
With that in mind, here's a Run script code snippet that might achieve what you want:
final String[] argumentNames = {"arg1", "arg2", "arg3"};
// For each argument this method creates two variables. For example for arg1 it creates
// arg1ArgumentIdentifierOptional and arg1ArgumentAssignmentOptional.
// If the value of the variable set from the previous form (in this case, arg1) is not empty, then it will
// set 'arg1ArgumentIdentifierOptional' to '--arg', and 'arg1ArgumentAssignmentOptional' to the string arg1=val1 (where val1
// was the value the user entered in the form for the variable).
// Otherwise, both arg1ArgumentIdentifierOptional and arg1ArgumentAssignmentOptional will be set to empty.
//
// This allows the installer to pass both parameters in a later Run executable task without worrying about if they're
// set or not.
for (String argumentName : argumentNames) {
String argumentValue = context.getVariable(argumentName)==null?null:context.getVariable(argumentName)+"";
boolean valueNonEmpty = (argumentValue != null && argumentValue.length() > 0);
context.setVariable(
argumentName + "ArgumentIdentifierOptional",
valueNonEmpty ? "--arg": ""
);
context.setVariable(
argumentName + "ArgumentAssignmentOptional",
valueNonEmpty ? argumentName+"="+argumentValue : ""
);
}
return true;
The final step is to launch the service or executable. I'm not too sure how services work, but with the executable, you create the task then edit the 'Arguments' field, giving it a line-separated list of values.
So in your case, it might look like this:
--install
${installer:arg1ArgumentIdentifierOptional}
${installer:arg1ArgumentAssignmentOptional}
${installer:arg2ArgumentIdentifierOptional}
${installer:arg2ArgumentAssignmentOptional}
${installer:arg3ArgumentIdentifierOptional}
${installer:arg3ArgumentAssignmentOptional}
"My Service Name1"
And that's it. If anyone else knows how to do this better feel free to improve on this method (this is for install4j 4.2.8, btw).