Simple backups with windows 1

by Jens on Nov.26, 2009, under Computer, Programmierung

Ich werde mal versuchen einige meiner Einträge auf Englisch zu verfassen – um in der Übung zu bleiben.

At my current workplace, working with Linux (or anything other than windows) seems to be something no one would even bother to think about. So I had to dig into the world of Windows Batch Scripting in order to create those little tools that make my life just a bit easier when using linux.

The first thing I had to do was creating a script that simply backups folders. I have a folder which contains other folders that should be archived – I usually zip (or 7zip) them and move them to the backup space later, which is a fairly easy task using a bash-script and nautilus actions.

Under windows it’s not that much harder to accomplish. (In the following example I used WinRAR to compress the files because that’s what we use at work.)

The first thing I needed was of course the batch-file that does the actual work. Here it is:

@echo off

rem ===================== Begin Configuration =====================
rem !!! Do not use quotes for the values of the following variables !!!

rem Path to the WinRAR executable file
set winrarPath=%PROGRAMFILES%\WinRAR\WinRAR.exe

rem ====================== End Configuration ======================

rem Please only edit after this line if you know exactly what you are doing.

set curVer=0.1 [2009-11-26]

rem ======================== Begin Script ========================

rem Tell the user which version of the tool they use
echo.
echo                     Mi ArchiveSubfolders version %curVer%
echo.
echo.

if not exist "%winrarPath%" (
    echo Cannot find WinRAR exe file: %winrarPath%
    goto eof
)

set dir=%*
if not exist "%dir%" (
    echo The directory "%dir%" cannot be found
    goto eof
)

set dateString=%DATE:~-4,4%-%DATE:~-7,2%-%DATE:~0,2%_%TIME:~0,2%-%TIME:~3,2%-%TIME:~6,2%

cd "%dir%"
for /D %%a in (*) do (
    rem Creating the archive
    echo Archiving "%%~na"...
    "%winrarPath%" M -afzip -ibck -inul -m5 "%dateString%-%%~na.zip" "%%a"
)

echo.
echo Archiving done

:eof

Now that is a nice, simple script, but what should I do with it? I wanted it to be useable directly in the explorer context-menu, so I made a small registry-entry. This is the exported .reg-file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\archiveSubfolders]
@="Mi: Archive Subfolders (ZIP)"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shell\archiveSubfolders\Command]
@="cmd /c \"\"%%ProgramFiles%%\\MiTools\\archiveSubfolders\\archiveSubfolders.bat\"\" %1"

Now I wanted a simple installation-script, for really lazy people like me:

@echo off

set installDir=%PROGRAMFILES%\MiTools\archiveSubfolders

if not exist "%installDir%" (
    mkdir "%installDir%"
)

copy archiveSubfolders.bat "%installDir%"
copy "ArchiveSubfolders Context Menu Entry.reg" "%installDir%"

regedit /S "ArchiveSubfolders Context Menu Entry.reg"

echo Installation complete.

:eof

Is it just ?