parsing property streams from .msg files

[Arjohn Kampman <ar...@aduna-software.com>]

Hi all,

Please excuse me if this has been asked before (couldn't find anything
in the archives), but does POI and/or HSMF supporting parsing of
properties from the property streams of msg files? Fixed length
properties values such as the send date seem to be stored directly in
this "__properties_version1.0" entry, rather than in the
"__substg1.0_XYZ" entries.

Regards,

-- 
Arjohn Kampman, Senior Software Engineer
Aduna - Semantic Power
www.aduna-software.com

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Re: parsing property streams from .msg files

[Nick Burch <ni...@alfresco.com>]

On Wed, 26 May 2010, Arjohn Kampman wrote:
> Thanks for the quick response. I've been doing quite a bit of reading 
> through these specs already. It looks fairly easy to parse this 
> particular data stream.

The problem I always find with the outlook stuff is that the documentation 
is strewn across a large number of files, and it's often a nightmare to 
find where a given datastructure is defined when you're reading the bit 
which says what datastructures make up a given chunk...

> I'll see what I can do wrt supplying patches.

Wonderful, will look forward to it! Do make sure you're using the latest 
svn though to work on, as HSMF did gets lots of changes since 3.6

Nick

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Re: parsing property streams from .msg files

[Arjohn Kampman <ar...@aduna-software.com>]

On 26/05/2010 16:33, Nick Burch wrote:
> On Wed, 26 May 2010, Arjohn Kampman wrote:
>> Please excuse me if this has been asked before (couldn't find anything
>> in the archives), but does POI and/or HSMF supporting parsing of
>> properties from the property streams of msg files? Fixed length
>> properties values such as the send date seem to be stored directly in
>> this "__properties_version1.0" entry, rather than in the
>> "__substg1.0_XYZ" entries.
>
> There have been quite a bit of work on HSMF since 3.6 came out, so
> you'll probably want to grab a recent svn checkout / nightly build
>
> However, in answer to your question, there's not currently any support
> for reading data out of the properties stream, no. It would be good to
> have this added in though. I'd suggest you look through the various
> Microsoft file format docs for outlook (there's over a dozen if memory
> serves...), and try to identify the one that specifies the
> __properties_version stream. With that, it shouldn't be too hard to add
> in the support to HSMF, and a patch would certainly be welcome! :)

Thanks for the quick response. I've been doing quite a bit of reading
through these specs already. It looks fairly easy to parse this
particular data stream. I'll see what I can do wrt supplying patches.

-- 
Arjohn Kampman, Senior Software Engineer
Aduna - Semantic Power
www.aduna-software.com

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Re: parsing property streams from .msg files

[Nick Burch <ni...@alfresco.com>]

On Wed, 26 May 2010, Arjohn Kampman wrote:
> Please excuse me if this has been asked before (couldn't find anything
> in the archives), but does POI and/or HSMF supporting parsing of
> properties from the property streams of msg files? Fixed length
> properties values such as the send date seem to be stored directly in
> this "__properties_version1.0" entry, rather than in the
> "__substg1.0_XYZ" entries.

There have been quite a bit of work on HSMF since 3.6 came out, so you'll 
probably want to grab a recent svn checkout / nightly build

However, in answer to your question, there's not currently any support for 
reading data out of the properties stream, no. It would be good to have 
this added in though. I'd suggest you look through the various Microsoft 
file format docs for outlook (there's over a dozen if memory serves...), 
and try to identify the one that specifies the __properties_version 
stream. With that, it shouldn't be too hard to add in the support to HSMF, 
and a patch would certainly be welcome! :)

Nick

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