Can VFP schedule a task in Windows 7?

[markftwain]

What is the best way to have a User programatically schedule a task in VFP on Windows 7? I would like to have a single vfp .exe file be scheduled at a time specified by the user. At run time, I would like it to receive the initial parameters it was scheduled with. I have tried every permutation of Schtasks, ShellExecute, and Wsript without success. Additionally, it would be nice to avoid the momentary flash of the cmd window. When using ShellExecute, I can't seem to pass any parameters to SchTasks and Wscript seems hopeless.

Thank You

 

[Olaf Doschke]

Well, planning Tasks is already quite easy via Scheduled Taks Manager. And indeed an application doing that programmatically needs the same administrative priviliges as you need to schedule a task anyway.

Besides that I googled "vfp schedule task" for you and found:

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/fo...l/thread/39361be1-7ecc-4b5f-b379-a61da2bbac97

Bye, Olaf.

 

[markftwain]

Hi Olaf,

Thank you for the reference. I missed that one. Unfortunately, it seems to depend on taskManager.dll meant for pre-vista machines. Any idea how to deal with windows 7?

 

[Olaf Doschke]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Scheduler

See section Task Scheduler 2.0

So you're right, that has changed drastically.

You say "I have tried every permutation of Schtasks, ShellExecute, and Wsript without success."

Can you perhaps post a sample you tried? Is the only difficulty passing in parameters, registering a task with parameters given in foxpro?

The easiest would perhaps be ShellExecuting SchTasks, the 4th parameter of ShellExecute is to pass parameters to the EXE run with ShellExecute, that is toSchTasks.

To pass in parameters to the exe started by the task, you need to set them in the command executed, eg theat command is not only the exe name of the foxpro exe, but you add the parameters there.

Eg take this XML of a scheduled task:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa383765(v=VS.85).aspx

If you modify the command in it from notepad.exe to notepad.exe readme.txt notepad will try to find a readme.txt and if not pops up a dialog asking, if it should create the file.

In your foxpro exe the main.prg must have an lparameters line and you can receive the parameters set within the command of the scheduled task.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[DougHennig]

See

http://doughennig.blogspot.com/2007/04/scheduling-tasks.html

for information on a class I created that can schedule tasks in both XP and Vista/Win 7.

Doug