File I/O

OpenOffice Developer's Guide

OpenOffice Basic

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• First Steps with OpenOffice Basic

• Creating a Module in a Standard Library
• Writing and Debugging a Basic UNO program
• Calling a Sub from the User Interface
• Creating Dialogs
• Adding Event Handlers
• AutoPilot Dialogs

• OpenOffice Basic IDE

• Managing Basic and Dialog Libraries

• OpenOffice Basic Macros Dialog

• Displayed Information
• Buttons

• OpenOffice Basic Macro Organizer Dialog

• Modules
• Dialogs
• Libraries

• Basic IDE Window

• Basic Source Editor and Debugger
• Dialog Editor

• Assigning Macros to GUI Events
• Dialog Localization

• Technical Background

• Features of OpenOffice Basic

• Functional Range Overview

• Screen I/O Functions
• File I/O
• Date and Time Functions
• Numeric Functions
• String Functions
• Specific UNO Functions

• Accessing the UNO API
• Special Behavior of OpenOffice Basic

• Advanced Library Organization

• General Structure
• Accessing Libraries from Basic
• Variable Scopes

• Programming Dialogs and Dialog Controls

• Dialog Handling

• Showing a Dialog
• Getting the Dialog Model
• Dialog as Control Container
• Dialog Properties
• Common Properties
• Multi-Page Dialogs

• Dialog Controls

• Command Button
• Image Control
• Check Box
• Option Button
• Label Field
• Text Field
• List Box
• Combo Box
• Horizontal/Vertical Scroll Bar
• Group Box
• Progress Bar
• Horizontal/Vertical Line
• Date Field
• Time Field
• Numeric Field
• Currency Field
• Formatted Field
• Pattern Field
• File Control

• Creating Dialogs at Runtime
• Library File Structure

• Application Library Container
• Document Library Container

• Library Deployment

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OpenOffice.org Basic has a complete set of statements and runtime functions to access the operating system's file system that are compatible to Visual Basic. For platform independence, the ability to handle file names in file:// URL notation has been added.

It is not recommended to use this classic Basic file interface in the UNO context, because many interfaces in the OpenOffice.org API expect file I/O specific parameters whose types, for example, com.sun.star.io.XInputStream are not compatible with the classic Basic file API.

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For programming, the file I/O in OpenOffice.org API context with the service com.sun.star.ucb.SimpleFileAccess should be used. This service supports the interface com.sun.star.ucb.XSimpleFileAccess2, including the main interface com.sun.star.ucb.XSimpleFileAccess that provides fundamental methods to access the file system. The methods are explained in detail in the corresponding interface documentation. The following list provides an overview about the operations supported by this service:

• copy, move and remove files and folders (methods copy(), move(), kill())
• prompt for information about files and folders (methods isFolder(), isReadOnly(), getSize(), getContentType(), getDateTimeModified(), exists())
• open or create files (openFileRead(), openFileWrite(), openFileReadWrite()). These functions return objects that support the corresponding stream interfaces com.sun.star.io.XInputStream, com.sun.star.io.XOutputStream and com.sun.star.io.XStream. These interfaces are used to read and write files. The XSimpleFileAccess2 does not have methods of its own for these operations. Additionally, these interfaces are often necessary as parameters to access methods of several other interfaces. The opened files have to be closed by calling the appropriate methods com.sun.star.io.XInputStream:closeInput() or com.sun.star.io.XOutputStream:closeOutput().
• The XSimpleFileAccess2 also does not have methods to ask for or set the position within a file stream. This is done by calling methods of the com.sun.star.io.XSeekable interface that is supported by the objects returned by the openXXX() methods.

Two more services are instantiated at the global service manager that extends the service com.sun.star.ucb.SimpleFileAccess by functionality specific to text files:

• The service com.sun.star.io.TextInputStream supporting com.sun.star.io.XTextInputStream and com.sun.star.io.XActiveDataSink
• The service is initialized by passing an object supporting XInputStream to the com.sun.star.io.XActiveDataSink:setInputStream() method, for example, an object returned by com.sun.star.ucb.XSimpleFileAccess:openFileRead().

Then the method com.sun.star.io.XTextInputStream:readLine() and com.sun.star.io.XTextInputStream:readString() are used to read text from the input stream/file. The method com.sun.star.io.XTextInputStream:isEOF() is used to check for if the end of the file is reached. The com.sun.star.io.XTextInputStream:setEncoding() sets a text encoding where UTF-8 is the default.

• The service com.sun.star.io.TextOutputStream supporting com.sun.star.io.XTextOutputStream and com.sun.star.io.XActiveDataSource
• The service is initialized by passing an object supporting XOutputStream to the com.sun.star.io.XActiveDataSource:setOutputStream() method, for example, an object returned by com.sun.star.ucb.XSimpleFileAccess:openFileWrite().

Then the method com.sun.star.io.XTextOutputStream:writeString() is used to write text to the output stream.

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