Processes streams in the Horrible Property Set Format (HPSF) in POI + filesystems. Microsoft Office documents, i.e. POI filesystems, usually + contain meta data like author, title, last editing date etc. These items + are called properties and stored in + property set streams along with the document itself. These + streams are commonly named \005SummaryInformation and + \005DocumentSummaryInformation. However, a POI filesystem may + contain further property sets of other names or types.
-In order to extract the properties from a POI filesystem, a property set + stream's contents must be parsed into a {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.PropertySet} instance. Its subclasses {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.SummaryInformation} and {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.DocumentSummaryInformation} deal with the well-known + property set streams \005SummaryInformation and + \005DocumentSummaryInformation. (However, the streams' names are + irrelevant. What counts is the property set's first section's format ID - + see below.)
-For overviews, tutorials, examples, guides, and tool documentation, please see: - +The factory method {@link org.apache.poi.hpsf.PropertySetFactory#create} + creates a {@link org.apache.poi.hpsf.PropertySet} instance. This method + always returns the most specific property set: If it + identifies the stream data as a Summary Information or as a Document + Summary Information it returns an instance of the corresponding class, else + the general {@link org.apache.poi.hpsf.PropertySet}.
- -@see org.apache.poi.poifs -@see org.apache.poi.hssf - +A {@link org.apache.poi.hpsf.PropertySet} contains a list of {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.Section}s which can be retrieved with {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.PropertySet#getSections}. Each {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.Section} contains a {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.Property} array which can be retrieved with {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.Section#getProperties}. Since the vast majority of + {@link org.apache.poi.hpsf.PropertySet}s contains only a single {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.Section}, the convenience method {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.PropertySet#getProperties} returns the properties of a + {@link org.apache.poi.hpsf.PropertySet}'s {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.Section} (throwing a {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.NoSingleSectionException} if the {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.PropertySet} contains more (or less) than exactly one + {@link org.apache.poi.hpsf.Section}).
+ +Each {@link org.apache.poi.hpsf.Property} has an ID, a + type, and a value which can be retrieved + with {@link org.apache.poi.hpsf.Property#getID}, {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.Property#getType}, and {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.Property#getValue}, respectively. The value's class + depends on the property's type. The current implementation + does not yet support all property types and restricts the values' classes + to {@link java.lang.String}, {@link java.lang.Integer} and {@link + java.util.Date}. A value of a yet unknown type is returned as a byte array + containing the value's origin bytes from the property set stream.
+ +To retrieve the value of a specific {@link org.apache.poi.hpsf.Property}, + use {@link org.apache.poi.hpsf.Section#getProperty} or {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.Section#getPropertyIntValue}.
+ +The {@link org.apache.poi.hpsf.SummaryInformation} and {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.DocumentSummaryInformation} classes provide convenience + methods for retrieving well-known properties. For example, an application + that wants to retrieve a document's title string just calls {@link + org.apache.poi.hpsf.SummaryInformation#getTitle} instead of going through + the hassle of first finding out what the title's property ID is and then + using this ID to get the property's value.
+ +The following is still left to be implemented:
+ +Property dictionaries
+Writing property sets
+Codepage support
+Property type Unicode string
+Further property types
++ @author Rainer Klute (klute@rainer-klute.de) + @version $Id$ + @since 2002-02-09 +
+