How To: Read Merlin files

Merlin Project is a Mac application. MPXJ provides experimental support for reading some Merlin Project files. The Merlin file format does not necessarily contain a full set of start and finish dates for each task. Merlin calculates these dates when it displays a schedule. At the moment MPXJ lacks this functionality, so you may not find start and finish dates for each task.

Reading Merlin files

The simplest way to read a Merlin file is to use the UniversalProjectReader:

JavaC#

package org.mpxj.howto.read;

import org.mpxj.ProjectFile;
import org.mpxj.reader.UniversalProjectReader;

public class Merlin
{
    public void read() throws Exception
    {
        UniversalProjectReader reader = new UniversalProjectReader();
        ProjectFile project = reader.read("my-sample-merlin-project");
    }
}

using MPXJ.Net;

namespace MPXJ.Samples.HowToRead;

public class Merlin
{
    public void Read()
    {
        var reader = new UniversalProjectReader();
        var project = reader.Read("my-sample-merlin-project");
    }
}

Note that on a Mac Merlin projects are not single files, but rather they are directories containing multiple files (the Mac Finder normally hides this from you). When using MPXJ to read a Merlin project you pass the directory name to the UniversalProjectReader class.

You can work directly with the MerlinReader by replacing UniversalProjectReader with MerlinReader, although this offers no particular advantage as there are no additional configuration settings available on the MerlinReader class.