How To: Read SureTrak files

A Primavera SureTrak installation stores project data as a database consisting of a number of individual files. In a typical SureTrak installation files for a number of different projects live in a single projects directory. A SureTrak user can back up an individual project to create an STX file, which is a compressed archive containing all of the files from a single project.

Reading STX files

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

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

// ...

UniversalProjectReader reader = new UniversalProjectReader();
ProjectFile project = reader.read("my-sample.stx");

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

Reading a SureTrak directory

If you are working with a directory containing SureTrak project data you have two options. If you know that the directory only contains a single project, you can use the UniversalProjectReader:

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

// ...

UniversalProjectReader reader = new UniversalProjectReader();
ProjectFile project = reader.read("my-suretrak-directory");

If the directory happens to contain multiple projects the UniversalProjectReader will simply read the first one it finds, in alphabetic order.

If you know that the directory you are working with contains multiple projects, you will need to use the SureTrakDatabaseReader class.

import java.util.List;
import net.sf.mpxj.ProjectFile;
import net.sf.mpxj.primavera.suretrak.SureTrakDatabaseReader;

// ...

// Find a list of the project names
String directory = "my-suretrak-directory";
List<String> projectNames = SureTrakDatabaseReader.listProjectNames(directory);

// Tell the reader which project to work with
P3DatabaseReader reader = new SureTrakDatabaseReader();
reader.setProjectName(projectNames.get(0));

// Read the project
ProjectFile project = reader.read(directory);

As the example above shows, the SureTrakDatabaseReader class provides a method which lists the names of the SureTrak projects it finds in a directory. You can then select which project you want to load, and call the setProjectName method of the reader to make this selection. You can then call the read method passing in the name of the directory, and the reader will extract data for the selected project.