Task Zip Files

Your custom task code may rely on additional assemblies; you may wish to use a task zip file if those assemblies cannot be merged into a single assembly (by using a tool like Microsofts ILMerge), for example if merging third party assemblies would contravene a license agreement. Alternatively, your code may have dependencies which are not .NET assemblies and therefore cannot be merged, or may have requirements for other files such as supporting images or documentation which cannot be embedded into the assembly as a resource.

In all these cases, a suitable solution is to zip all the required files into a standard zip file.

When a task zip file is specified as the target of a task download, ArcGIS Explorer will download the zip file from the specified location. After downloading, it will unzip the contents of the file and find the contained task assembly. Using the name of the task assembly Explorer will create the appropriate task subfolder and copy the unzipped contents of the file to that location.

If you decide to use a task zip file, ensure that the  DownloadLocation element in your NMF file is set correctly to the name and location of the zip file.

A task zip file can have any level of compression and may contain any kind of file. However, a few rules must be followed in order to ensure ArcGIS Explorer can work with your zipfile correctly.

• Each task zip file should contain one, and only one, task assembly. The details of the task assembly within the zip file will be used to determine the name of the task subfolder to which the files are unzipped.
• Full paths should not be included, only relative paths, as the files in the zipfile must all be placed in the task folder (or a subfolder) when unzipped.