Password with special characters as command-line argument

[Portalman66]

Hello,

I'm having trouble passing a password. The password is entered in a dialog box during installation and then verified using an inline PowerShell script before starting the installation process. The password is passed to the script as a command-line argument: -User [USER_PROP] -Password [PASSWORD_PROP]
USER_PROP and PASSWORD_PROP are values taken straight from the dialog textfields.
PASSWORD_PROP may contain special characters such as " or ' or &. How can I pass the password if I don’t know which special characters it contains? If it starts with ", I get an error as soon as I pass it.

ERROR: At line:1 char:121
+ ... ogram Files `(x86`)\Common Files\" -User test -Password "Qwert123`&ÖÄ
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The string is missing the terminator: ".

I know it's the " in the password, but it could be a ' as well. How can I avoid the error?

Thank you for your help,

Portalman66

[Catalin]

Hello Portalman66,

Is your custom action immediate or deferred?

If the custom action is immediate, we can try retrieving the properties via the built in cmdlets that we offer, AI_GetMsiProperty.

Here is how it looks like:

Code: Select all

$password = AI_GetMsiProperty PASSWORD_PROP

Also, such a string is hard to be passed via command line due to the double quotes as well:

Code: Select all

"Qwert123`&ÖÄ

The first quotes must be escaped or the entire string enclosed in quotes, so adding another " at the end.

Screenshot_125.png (133 KiB) Viewed 7591 times

Screenshot_126.png (10.04 KiB) Viewed 7591 times

The property is retrieved just fine via the AI_GetMsiProperty cmdlet.

Best regards,
Catalin

[Portalman66]

Hi Catalin,

thank you for your answer. The trick was indeed to use the AI_GetMsiProperty PASSWORD_PROP because the " is no problem there and I can process the password in the following.

Thank you again for your help.

Best regards,
Portalman66

[Catalin]

You are always welcome!

Best regards,
Catalin