I found this link where it shows how to get the owner of the file but is there anyway we can also get the author of the file using windows api and C++?
author of the file
No such thing exists in Windows filesystems.
You might be confused by a descriptive metadata stored in some data formats, such as PDF, DOC, various image, audio and video formats.
Retrieving this metadata is obviously format-specific (there might be libraries for that).
Also, metadata is optional and not all the files contain it.
I'm currently working on a cross platform application that uses extended file attributes for storing it's own file ownership information (uid, gid) outside of the normal filesystem ownership. This information is application specific and has nothing to do with the normal filesystem ownership.
I just changed from using a small database stored in each folder for storing this information for performance reasons, but this leaves my solution lacking on the Windows platform.
According to wikipedia, NTFS may have some limited functionality as far as being able to store extended file attributes, but I certainly can't find any further information on how to get and set these attributes.
Has anyone done this before and can tell me how to do it? Or is it just plain not possible?
I'd ideally like to not have to revert to the database solution on Windows.
Maybe NTFS streams are what you are searching for?
Read more here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/105763 , http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff469210.aspx
We have a proprietary file format which has embedded in it a product-code.
I am just starting down the path of "enabling the end-user to sort / filter by product-code when opening a file".
The simplest approach for us might be to simply have another drop-down in our customized Open File Dialog in which to choose a product-code to filter by.
However, I think it might be more useful to the end-user if we could present this information as a column in the details view for this file type - just as name, date-modified, type, size, etc., are also detail properties of a file-type (or perhaps generic to all files).
My vague understanding is that XP and prior Windows OSes embedded some sort of meta data like this in an alternate data stream in NTFS. However, Starting in Vista Microsoft stopped using alternate data streams due to their dependence upon NTFS, and hence fragility (i.e. can't send via file attachment, can't move to a FAT formatted thumb drive, etc.)
Things I need to know but haven't figured out yet:
Is it possible / Is it practicable / how to create a custom extended file property for our file type that expresses the product-code to the Windows shell so that it can be seen in Windows Explorer (and hence File dialogs)?
If that is doable, then how to configure things so that the product-code column is displayed by default for folders containing our file type.
Can anyone point me to a good starting point on the above? We certainly don't have to accomplish this by publishing a custom extended file property - but that seems like a sensible approach, in absence of any way to measure the costs of going this route.
If you have sensible alternative approaches to the problem, I'd be interested in those as well!
Just found: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/830/The-Complete-Idiot-s-Guide-to-Writing-Shell-Extens
CRAP! It seems I'm very late to the banquet, and MS has already removed this functionality from their shell: http://xpwasmyidea.blogspot.com/2009/10/evil-conspiracy-behind-customizable.html
By far the easiest approach to developing a shell extension is to use a library made for the purpose.
I can recommend EZShellExtension because I have used it in the past to add columns and thumbnails/preview for a custom file format for our company.
I'm using wxWidgets to write cross-plafrom applications. In one of applications I need to be able to load data from Microsoft Excel (.xls) files, but I need this to work on Linux as well, so I assume I cannot use OLE or whatever technology is available on Windows.
I see that there are many open source programs that can read excel files (OpenOffice, KOffice, etc.), so I wonder if there is some library that I could use?
Excel files it needs to support are very simple, straight tabular data. I don't need to extract any formatting except column/row position and the data itself.
Suggestedd reference: What is a simple and reliable C library for working with Excel files?
I came across other libraries (chicago on sf.net, xlsLib) but they seem to be outdated.
jrh
I can say that I know of a wxWidgets application that reads Excel .xls and .xlsx files on any platform. For the .xlsx files we used an XML parser and zip stream reader and grab the data we need, pretty easy to get going. For the .xls files we used: ExcelFormat, which works well and we found the author to be very generous with his support.
Maybe just some encouragement to give it a go? It was a couple of days work to get working.
Maybe http://www.libxl.com/ can help ?
I think that it is not something easy to do. xls files are quite complex and it is a proprietary format.
Maybe this is a stupid idea but why don't you upload and access your doc with Google docs. There are some apis to access your doc.
2 potential problems:
- Your app needs internet access
- Currently there is no C++ api.
But there are api for several languages including python see http://code.google.com/intl/fr/apis/gdata/articles/python_client_lib.html
I'm just learning C++, just started to mess around with QT, and I am sitting here wondering how most applications save data? Is there an industry standard? Do they store it in a XML file, text file, SQLite? What about sensitive data that say accounting software would need to save? I'm just interested in learning what the best practices for this are.
Thanks
This question is way too broad. The only answer is it depends on the nature of the particular application and the data, and whether or not it is written in C++ has very little to do with it.
For example, user-configurable application settings are often stored in text files, but on Windows they are typically stored in the Registry. Accounting applications typically keep their data in a database of some sort.
There are many good ways to store application data (call it serialization).
Personally, I think for larger datasets, using an open format is much, much easier for debugging. If you go with XML, for example, you can store your data in an open form so that if you have file corruption issues (i.e. a client can't open your file for some reason), it's easier to find. If you have sensitive data in there, you can always encrypt it before writing it to file using key encryption. Microsoft, for instance, has gone from using a proprietary format to open xml in their office docs. They use .*x extension (.docx, .xlsx, etc). It's really just a compressed folder with xml files.
Using binary serialization is, of course, the industry standard at the moment for most standalone applications. Most likely that is because of the application framework they are using (such as MFC, which is old). If you take a look at most of the serialization techniques in modern application frameworks, XML serialization is very well supported.
First you need to clarify what kind of data you would like to save.
If you just want to save some application settings, use QSettings to save your settings to an INI file or registry.
If it is much more than just some application settings, go for XML files or SQL.
There is no standard practice, however if you want to use complex structured data, consider using an embedded database engine such as SQLite or Metakit, or Berkeley DB files. XML files would also do the job and be human readable/writable. Preferences can use INI files or the Windows registry, and so on. In short, it really depends on your usage pattern.
This is a general question. Like many things, the right answer depends on your application and its needs.
Most desktop applications save end-user data to a file (think Word and Excel). The format is up to you, XML, binary, etc. And if you can serialize/deserialize objects to file it will probably make your life easier.
Internal application data such as configuration files or temporary data might be saved to an XML file or an lightweight, local database such as SQLite
Often, "enterprise" applications used internally by a business will save their data to a back-end database such as SQL Server or Oracle. This is so all of the enterprise's data is saved to a single central location. And then it is available for reporting, etc.
For accounting software, you would need to consider the business domain and end users. For example, if the software is to be sold to large businesses you would probably use some form of a database to save data. Otherwise a binary file would be fine, perhaps with some form of encryption if you are really paranoid.
When you say "the best way", then you have to define what you mean by "good".
The problem is that various requirements conflict with each other, therefore so you can't satisfy all of them simultaneously.
For example, if one requirement is "concurrent multi-user access to the data" then this suggests using a database engine, but that conflicts with "as small as possible" and "minimize dependencies on 3rd-party software".
If a requirement is "portable data format" then this suggests XML, but that conflicts with "compact" and "indexed".
Do they store it in a XML file, text file, SQLite?
Yes.
Also, Binary files and relational databases.
Anything else?