I can't copy Public properties to an external file form CustomAction on WiX

[ahmedhm19]

I'm trying to copy the value of a public property (which are set from CMD) to an external text file, but it's returning the property name not the value:

<Property Id='PROP1'/>
<Property Id='PROP2'/>
<Property Id="CA_DOTNETCA_OnInstall_BeforeInstallingFiles" Value="PROP1=[PROP1];PROP2=[PROP2]" />
<CustomAction Id="CA_DOTNETCA_OnInstall_BeforeInstallingFiles" BinaryKey="BIN_DOTNETCustomActions" DllEntry="CA_OnInstall_BeforeInstallingFiles" Execute="deferred" Return="check" Impersonate="no" />

MyCustomAction :

[CustomAction]
  public static ActionResult CA_OnInstall_BeforeInstallingFiles(Session session)
  {
          CustomActionData data = session.CustomActionData;

          string createText = "text : " + data["PROP1"] + " " + data["PROP2"];
          File.WriteAllText("c:/text.txt", createText);

          return ActionResult.Success;
  }

---

And this is the output content of text file :

text : [PROP1] [PROP2]

[robmen]

Yes. What you are doing is manually assigning the string [PROP1] to the deferred custom action property PROP1 and similar for PROP2. The custom action is printing out exactly the value you assigned.

It sounds like you actually want the string [PROP1] to be evaluated and provide the value of the property PROP1. To do that, you must specify when the property should be evaluated. One way to do that:

<SetProperty Id="CA_DOTNETCA_OnInstall_BeforeInstallingFiles" Value="PROP1=[PROP1];PROP2=[PROP2]"
             Before="CA_DOTNETCA_OnInstall_BeforeInstallingFiles"  />