How To: Read SDEF files

The Standard Data Exchange Format (SDEF) is the US Army Corps of Engineers standard format for exchanging schedule data between systems. The definition of this format can be found here.

Reading SDEF files

The simplest way to read an SDEF file is to use the UniversalProjectReader:

JavaC#

package org.mpxj.howto.read;

import net.sf.mpxj.ProjectFile;
import net.sf.mpxj.reader.UniversalProjectReader;

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

using MPXJ.Net;

namespace MPXJ.Samples.HowToRead;

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

Using SDEFReader

You can work directly with the SDEFReader class by replacing UniversalProjectReader with SDEFReader. This provides access to additional options, as described below.

Ignore Errors

By default MPXJ will ignore errors when parsing attributes from an SDEF file. This behavior is controlled using the setIgnoreErrors method. The example below illustrates how we can force the SDEFReader to report errors encountered when reading a file:

JavaC#

package org.mpxj.howto.read;

import net.sf.mpxj.ProjectFile;
import net.sf.mpxj.sdef.SDEFReader;

public class SDEFIgnoreErrors
{
    public void read() throws Exception
    {
        SDEFReader reader = new SDEFReader();
        reader.setIgnoreErrors(false);
        ProjectFile project = reader.read("my-sample.sdef");
    }
}

using MPXJ.Net;

namespace MPXJ.Samples.HowToRead;

public class SDEFIgnoreErrors
{
    public void Read()
    {
        var reader = new SDEFReader();
        reader.IgnoreErrors = false;
        var project = reader.Read("my-sample.sdef");
    }
}

Note that if errors are ignored when reading a file, the ignored errors are available by using the ProjectFile.getIgnoredErrors() method.