Retrieve manufacturer information from device that AIR app is running on

Question

Does anybody know of a way to retrieve information about the manufacturer/model of the device that the AIR app is running on. The Capabilities class doesn\'t seem to cut it.

Answer 1

On Windows, it's possible to query the motherboard's serial number with WMIC, or Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line. Therefore, you can simply pass the command wmic baseboard get serialnumber as an argument to cmd.exe using flash.desktop.NativeProcess without the need for a Native Extension.

Since the AIR NativeProcess API is being used, you must use the Extended Desktop application profile and package your application with a native installer.

package 
{
    //Imports
    import flash.display.Sprite;
    import flash.display.StageScaleMode;
    import flash.display.StageAlign;
    import flash.desktop.NativeProcess;
    import flash.desktop.NativeProcessStartupInfo;
    import flash.events.ProgressEvent;
    import flash.filesystem.File;

    //Class
    [SWF(width = "600", height = "250", frameRate = "60", backgroundColor = "0x000000")]
    public class Main extends Sprite 
    {
        //Constants
        private static const MOTHERBOARD_SERIALNUMBER_COMMAND:String = "wmic baseboard get serialnumber";

        //Properties
        private var nativeProcess:NativeProcess;

        //Constructor
        public function Main():void 
        {
            stage.scaleMode = StageScaleMode.NO_SCALE;
            stage.align = StageAlign.TOP_LEFT;

            init();
        }       

        //Init
        private function init():void
        {
            if (!NativeProcess.isSupported)
            {
                throw new Error("Native Process is not supported.");
            }

            var file:File = new File("C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd.exe");

            var args:Vector.<String> = new Vector.<String>();
            args.push("/c");
            args.push(MOTHERBOARD_SERIALNUMBER_COMMAND);

            var nativeProcessStartupInfo:NativeProcessStartupInfo = new NativeProcessStartupInfo();
            nativeProcessStartupInfo.executable = file;         
            nativeProcessStartupInfo.arguments = args;

            nativeProcess = new NativeProcess(); 
            nativeProcess.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.STANDARD_OUTPUT_DATA, outputDataEventHandler);
            nativeProcess.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.STANDARD_ERROR_DATA, outputErrorEventHandler);
            nativeProcess.start(nativeProcessStartupInfo);
        }

        //Output Data Event Handler
        private function outputDataEventHandler(event:ProgressEvent):void 
        { 
            var output:String = nativeProcess.standardOutput.readUTFBytes(nativeProcess.standardOutput.bytesAvailable);

            nativeProcess.exit();

            trace(output);
        }

        //Output Error Event Handler
        private function outputErrorEventHandler(event:ProgressEvent):void
        {
            nativeProcess.exit();

            throw new Error(event);
        }
    }
}

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[EDIT]

Alternatively, if you would also like to retreive the motherboard's manufacturer, model number and serial number, you can update the string constant to this:

//Constants
private static const MOTHERBOARD_INFO:String = "wmic baseboard get product, manufacturer, serialnumber";

---

[EDIT 2]

I just learned that the following WMIC command will return the name, vendor and identifying number of a machine. It sounds exactly what your looking for:

//Constants
private static const CSPRODUCT_INFO:String = "wmic csproduct get name, vendor, identifyingNumber";

However, keep in mind that for custom built PCs, such as my own, this command returns nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but instead of something typical like:

IdentifyingNumber  Name           Vendor
99L9891            Latitude D610  Dell Inc.

My custom build returns this:

IdentifyingNumber     Name                 Vendor
System Serial Number  System Product Name  System manufacturer