How To: Read Primavera PLF files

Primavera P6 can export layout information as PLF files. These files define the visual appearance of the P6 user interface, and can be imported and exported by P6. Although MPXJ doesn't currently offer any facilities to interpret the contents of these files, the data they contain can be read.

Reading PLF files

A PLF file contains "structured text" and can be read using StructuredTextParser:

package org.mpxj.howto.read;

import net.sf.mpxj.primavera.StructuredTextParser;
import net.sf.mpxj.primavera.StructuredTextRecord;

import java.io.FileInputStream;

public class PLF
{
   public void read() throws Exception
   {
      StructuredTextParser parser = new StructuredTextParser();
      StructuredTextRecord record = parser.parse(new FileInputStream("test.plf"));
   }
}

Attributes

The resulting StructuredTextRecord contains attributes which can be accesed individually by name, as shown below:

record.getAttribute("attribute_name");

The attributes can also be retrieved in the form of a Map containing all attributes for this record:

Map<String,String> attributes = record.getAttributes();
attributes.get("attribute_name");

Each record has two special attributes: a record number, and optionally a record name. These appear as part of the identifying information for each record, not as part of the general set of attributes for the record. These can be retrieved as shown below:

String recordNumber = record.getRecordNumber();
String recordName = record.getRecordName();

These attributes will also be found in the attributes Map with the keys _record_number and _record_name.

Child records

Along with a set of attributes, each StructuredTextRecord may have child StructuredTextRecord instances. These be retrieved as a list, as shown below:

List<StructuredTextRecord> childRecords = record.getChildren();

Certain record types are named, and where this is the case a child record can be retrieved individually by name:

StructuredTextRecord child = record.getChild("child_name");