More HPSF property writing documentation.

git-svn-id: https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/jakarta/poi/trunk@353351 13f79535-47bb-0310-9956-ffa450edef68
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Rainer Klute 2003-09-15 20:13:01 +00:00
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@ -39,12 +39,11 @@
</li>
<li>
The <link href="#sec4">fourth section</link> will tell you how to write
property set streams - once it is written. Writing is still quite
rudimentary in HPSF and you have to understand the <link
href="#sec3">third section</link> before you should think about writing
properties. Stick to the Javadoc API documentation to find out more about
writing property sets!
The <link href="#sec4">fourth section</link> tells you how to write
property set streams. Writing is still rudimentary in HPSF. You have to
understand the <link href="#sec3">third section</link> before you should
think about writing properties. Check the Javadoc API documentation to
find out about the details!
</li>
</ol>
@ -347,7 +346,7 @@ else
<li>Each section has a format ID. The format ID of the first section in a
property set determines the property set's type. For example, the first
(and only) section of the SummaryInformation property set has a format
(and only) section of the summary information property set has a format
ID of <code>F29F85E0-4FF9-1068-AB-91-08-00-2B-27-B3-D9</code>. You can
get the format ID with <code>Section.getFormatID()</code>.</li>
@ -854,18 +853,18 @@ No property set stream: "/1Table"</source>
<note>This section describes how to write properties.</note>
<section><title>Overview</title>
<section><title>Overview of Writing Properties</title>
<p>Writing properties is possible at a low level only at the moment. You
have to deal with property IDs and variant types to write
properties. There are no convenient classes or convenient methods for
properties. There are no convenience classes or convenience methods for
dealing with summary information and document summary information streams
yet. If you have not already done so, you should read <link
href="#sec3">section 3</link> to understand the following.</p>
yet. Therefore you should have read <link href="#sec3">section 3</link>
to understand what follows in this section.</p>
<p>HPSF's writing capabilities come with the classes
<code>MutablePropertySet</code>, <code>MutableSection</code>, and
<code>MutableProperty</code> and some helper classes. The "mutable"
classes extend their superclasses <code>PropertySet</code>,
<code>MutablePropertySet</code>, <code>MutableSection</code>,
<code>MutableProperty</code>, and some helper classes. The "mutable"
classes extend their respective superclasses <code>PropertySet</code>,
<code>Section</code>, and <code>Property</code> and provide "set" and
"write" methods.</p>
@ -876,16 +875,17 @@ No property set stream: "/1Table"</source>
<li>Create a <code>MutablePropertySet</code> instance.</li>
<li>Get hold of a <code>MutableSection</code>. You can either retrieve
the one that is always present in a new <code>MutablePropertySet</code>
or create a new <code>MutableSection</code> and add it to the
<code>MutablePropertySet</code>.
the one that is always present in a new <code>MutablePropertySet</code>,
or you have to create a new <code>MutableSection</code> and add it to
the <code>MutablePropertySet</code>.
</li>
<li>Set any <code>Section</code> fields as you like.</li>
<li>Create as many <code>MutableProperty</code> objects as you need. Set
each property's ID, type, and value. Add the
<code>MutableProperties</code> to the <code>MutableSection</code>.
<code>MutableProperty</code> objects to the
<code>MutableSection</code>.
</li>
<li>Create further <code>MutableSection</code>s if you need them.</li>
@ -897,10 +897,190 @@ No property set stream: "/1Table"</source>
</section>
<section><title>Low-level Writing Functions In Details</title>
<fixme author="Rainer Klute">This section is still to be written.</fixme>
<p>Writing properties is introduced by an artificial but simple example: a
program creating a new document (aka POI file system) which contains only
a single document: a summary information property set stream. The latter
will hold the document's title only. This is artificial in that it does
not contain any Word, Excel or other kind of useful application document
data. A document containing just a property set is without any practical
use. However, is makes the example very simple, and you will get quickly
used to writing properties.</p>
<p>Here's the source code of the sample application. You can also find it
in the "examples" section of the POI source code
distribution. Explanations are following below.</p>
<source>package org.apache.poi.hpsf.examples;
import java.io.*;
import org.apache.poi.hpsf.*;
import org.apache.poi.hpsf.wellknown.*;
import org.apache.poi.poifs.filesystem.*;
public class WriteTitle
{
public static void main(final String[] args)
throws WritingNotSupportedException, IOException
{
/* Check whether we have exactly one command-line argument. */
if (args.length != 1)
{
System.err.println("Usage: " + WriteTitle.class.getName() +
"destinationPOIFS");
System.exit(1);
}
final String fileName = args[0];
final POIFSFileSystem poiFs = new POIFSFileSystem();
/* Create a mutable property set. Initially it contains a single section
* with no properties. */
final MutablePropertySet mps = new MutablePropertySet();
/* Retrieve the section the property set already contains. */
final MutableSection ms = (MutableSection) mps.getSections().get(0);
/* Turn the property set into a summary information property. This is
* done by setting the format ID of its first section to
* SectionIDMap.SUMMARY_INFORMATION_ID. */
ms.setFormatID(SectionIDMap.SUMMARY_INFORMATION_ID);
/* Create an empty property. */
final MutableProperty p = new MutableProperty();
/* Fill the property with appropriate settings so that it specifies the
* document's title. */
p.setID(PropertyIDMap.PID_TITLE);
p.setType(Variant.VT_LPWSTR);
p.setValue("Sample title");
/* For writing the property set into a POI file system it has to be
* handed over to the POIFS.createDocument() method as an input stream
* which produces the bytes making out the property set stream. */
final InputStream is = mps.toInputStream();
/* Create the summary information property set in the POI file
* system. It is given the default name most (if not all) summary
* information property sets have. */
poiFs.createDocument(is, SummaryInformation.DEFAULT_STREAM_NAME);
/* Write the whole POI file system to a disk file. */
poiFs.writeFilesystem(new FileOutputStream(fileName));
}
}</source>
<p>The application expects the name of the POI file system to be created
on the command line. It checks that there is exactly a single argument
and stores it in the <code>fileName</code> variable:</p>
<source>if (args.length != 1)
{
System.err.println("Usage: " + WriteTitle.class.getName() +
"destinationPOIFS");
System.exit(1);
}
final String fileName = args[0];</source>
<p>Let's create a property set now. We cannot use the
<code>PropertySet</code> class, because it is read-only: It does not have
a constructor creating an empty property set, and it does not have any
methods to modify its contents. Instead use the class
<code>MutablePropertySet</code>. It is a subclass of
<code>PropertySet</code>, and its no-args constructor established an
empty property set which we will fill later.</p>
<source>final MutablePropertySet mps = new MutablePropertySet();</source>
<p>By the way, the <code>MutablePropertySet</code> class has another
constructor taking a <code>PropertySet</code> as parameter. It creates a
mutable copy of its parameter.</p>
<p>The <code>MutablePropertySet</code> created by the no-args constructor
is not really empty: It contains a single section without any
properties. We can either retrieve that section and fill it with
properties, or we can replace it by another section. Of course we can
also add further sections to the property set. The sample application
decides to retrieve the section being already there:</p>
<source>final MutableSection ms = (MutableSection) mps.getSections().get(0);</source>
<p>The <code>getSections()</code> method returns the property set's
sections as a list, i.e. an instance of
<code>java.util.List</code>. Calling <code>get(0)</code> returns the
list's first (or zeroth if you prefer) element. It is a
<code>MutableSection</code>: a subclass of <code>Section</code> you can
modify.</p>
<p>Presently the <code>MutableSection</code> is still empty: It contains
no properties and does not have a format ID. As you have read in <link
href="#sec3">above</link> the format ID of the first section in a
property set determines the property set's type. If our property set
should become a summary information property set we have to set the
format ID of its first (and only) section to
<code>F29F85E0-4FF9-1068-AB-91-08-00-2B-27-B3-D9</code>. However, you
won't have to remember that ID if you want to write your own
summary information property sets: HPSF has it defined as the well-known
constant <code>Section.getFormatID()</code>. The sample application
writes it to the section with the <code>setFormatID(byte[])</code>
method.</p>
<source>ms.setFormatID(SectionIDMap.SUMMARY_INFORMATION_ID);</source>
<p>Now it is time to create a property. As you might expect there is a
subclass of <code>Property</code> called
<code>MutableProperty</code>.</p>
<source>final MutableProperty p = new MutableProperty();</source>
<p>A <code>MutableProperty</code> object must have an ID, a type, and a
value (see <link href="#sec3">above</link> for details). The class
provides methods to set these attributes:</p>
<source>p.setID(PropertyIDMap.PID_TITLE);
p.setType(Variant.VT_LPWSTR);
p.setValue("Sample title");</source>
<p>Now the sample property set is complete: We have a
<code>MutablePropertySet</code> containing a <code>MutableSection</code>
containing a <code>MutableProperty</code>. Of course we could have added
more sections and properties but we wanted to keep things simple.</p>
<p>The property set has to be written to a POI file system. The following
statement creates it.</p>
<source>final POIFSFileSystem poiFs = new POIFSFileSystem();</source>
<p>In order to write the property set to a POI file system it must be
converted into a sequence of bytes. The <code>MutablePropertySet</code>
class has a method <code>toInputStream()</code>. This method returns an
<code>InputStream</code> containing the bytes making out the property set
stream.</p>
<source>final InputStream is = mps.toInputStream();</source>
<p>If you'd read from this input stream you'd receive all these
bytes. However, it is very likely that you never do that. Instead you'll
pass the input stream to the <code>createDocument()</code> method of a
<code>POIFSFileSystem</code> instance, like the one we created a few
lines ago. Besides an <code>InputStream</code> the
<code>createDocument()</code> method takes another parameter: the name of
the document to be created. For a summary information property set stream
the default name is available as
<code>SummaryInformation.DEFAULT_STREAM_NAME</code>:</p>
<source>poiFs.createDocument(is, SummaryInformation.DEFAULT_STREAM_NAME);</source>
<p>The last step is to write the POI file system to a disk file:</p>
<source>poiFs.writeFilesystem(new FileOutputStream(fileName));</source>
</section>
</section>
<section><title>Further Reading</title>
<p>There are still some aspects of HSPF left which are not covered by this
HOW-TO. You should dig into the Javadoc API documentation to learn