How To: Use the Universal Project Reader

As you may have seen elsewhere in this documentation, the preferred way to read from most sources of schedule data is to use the UniversalProjectReader:

ProjectReader reader = new UniversalProjectReader ();
ProjectFile project = reader.read("example.mpp");

This is very convenient as you don't need to know ahead of time what type of schedule file you are working with, UniversalProjectReader will figure this out for you. The drawback to this approach is that for a number of schedule types, the reader class for that type may provide additional configuration options to guide the way schedule data is read. In the example above, you can see that there is no opportunity to provide any extra configuration to the reader class selected by UniversalProjectReader.

To get around this issue, UniversalProjectReader provides access to "project reader proxy" classes. These proxy classes implement the UniversalProjectReader.ProjectReaderProxy interface and provide access to the reader class which UniversalProjectReader has selected to read the project data at the point just before schedule data has been read.

You can use these proxy classes to, for example, choose whether or not to continue reading the type of schedule contained in the supplied file or stream, or you can change the reader's settings before continuing to read the schedule. The example code below illustrates both these situations.

UniversalProjectReader upr = new UniversalProjectReader();

// Retrieve the proxy
try (UniversalProjectReader.ProjectReaderProxy proxy = upr.getProjectReaderProxy(file))
{
   // Retrieve the reader class
   ProjectReader reader = proxy.getProjectReader();

   // Determine if we want to continue processing this file type.
   // In this example we are ignoring SDEF files.
   if (reader instanceof SDEFReader)
   {      
      return;
   }

   // Provide configuration for specific reader types.
   // In this example we are changing the behavior of the Phoenix reader.
   if (reader instanceof PhoenixReader)
   {
      ((PhoenixReader)reader).setUseActivityCodesForTaskHierarchy(false);
   }

   // Finally, we read the schedule
   ProjectFile project = proxy.read();

   // Now we can work with the schedule data...
}

The first thing to notice is that the proxy class is being used within a "try with resources" statement. This is important as the UniversalProjectReader may have a number of resources open (streams, temporary files, and so on) which need to be released once you have finished with the proxy class. UniversalProjectReader.ProjectReaderProxy implements the AutoCloseable interface, so you can either arrange to explicitly call the close method yourself at an appropriate point, or you can use try with resources to ensure this happens automatically.

The initial line of the try statement calls getProjectReaderProxy to retrieve the proxy. This method can be called with either a file name, a File instance, or an InputStream. Within the try block, the first thing we do is retrieve the reader class instance which the UniversalProjectReader has selected to read our schedule data.

The next two stanzas of code use instanceof to determine the type of the reader selected: in the first stanza we're choosing not to continue if we've been provided with an SDEF file. In the second stanza, if we are dealing with a Phoenix schedule, we're choosing to change the default behavior of the reader.

Finally at the end of the try block we're calling the read method of the proxy to read the schedule. The proxy also provides a readAll method: if the source data contains multiple schedules you can use this method to read them all.

Note that we're using the read or readAll methods provided by the proxy class, we're not attempting to use the methods provided on the reader class itself. This is important as the UniversalProjectReader may have located the schedule within a larger set of data, for example within a Zip file or sub-directory. The proxy class already has this context, whereas you won't necessarily have this information if you tried to use the reader class methods directly.