Running Notes

So, what I was trying to accomplish: I needed to generate a folder for a user, if the user did not already have a particular folder in this application. The folder needed to be able to be updated by the designer whenever requested changes were made (if a change was requested, each folder needed to have the new design), hence I could not use a shared-to-private view. DXL seems all the rage, so why not? Export the folder to DXL, edit and replace folder name to a new folder name, import the DXL and voila! Happy new folder. Added bonus, anytime the folder design changes, I could do the very same thing for all the folders and have the design updated. Extra added bonus, I could learn something new! [Note: a button automagically updates the documents in these folders, so no need to be concerned that I would be zapping meticulously moved documents when I replaced the folders.]

It all seemed too easy. For this exercise, I manually exported a folder using Tools, DXL Utilities, Exporter. Whew. Okay, halfway there, right? Ha. Well, first I tried to get fancy. I wanted to store the exported DXL in a profile doc in the database, and use the NotesDXLImporter (the help says you can use a rich text item) to import the DXL into a domino folder. A little help file here, a little help file there and I had this:

Dim session As New NotesSession
	Dim db As NotesDatabase
	Dim importer As NotesDXLImporter
	Dim doc As notesdocument
	Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
	Dim rtitem As notesrichtextitem
	Set doc = db.GetProfileDocument("adminprofile")
	Set rtitem = doc.getfirstitem("prodoc_body")
	
	Set importer = session.CreateDXLImporter
	importer.ReplaceDBProperties = False
	importer.ReplicaRequiredForReplaceOrUpdate = False
	importer.ACLImportOption = DXLIMPORTOPTION_IGNORE
	importer.DesignImportOption = DXLIMPORTOPTION_CREATE
	Call importer.Import(rtitem, db)

And … no go. It didn’t blow up, but I got an error, ever helpful as always.

Yes, thanks. Wonderful. Well, fine. Maybe for my first try, I should simplify a bit. Let’s get the DXL from a file.

Dim session As New NotesSession
	Dim db As NotesDatabase
	Dim importer As NotesDXLImporter
	Dim doc As notesdocument
	Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
	Dim stream As NotesStream
	Set stream = session.CreateStream
	If Not stream.Open("C:\Documents and Settings\kathy\Desktop\folder.dxl") Then
		Messagebox "Cannot open " ,, "Error"
		Exit Sub
	End If
	If stream.Bytes = 0 Then
		Messagebox "File did not exist or was empty"
		Exit Sub
	End If
	Set importer = session.CreateDXLImporter
	importer.ReplaceDBProperties = False
	importer.ReplicaRequiredForReplaceOrUpdate = False
	importer.ACLImportOption = DXLIMPORTOPTION_IGNORE
	importer.DesignImportOption = DXLIMPORTOPTION_CREATE
	Call importer.Import(stream, db)

Hey, look at that! I just successfully created a folder from DXL.

Being stubborn, I’ve tried to get the rich text item on the profile doc to work, and it…won’t. Stepping through the debugger, all looks right with the world. The DXL is correctly stored in the profile doc and captured in my code as a rich text item. It just doesn’t work.

So, being really stubborn, I still wanted this to work from a document within the database, rather than a file. Further investigation showed I could get plain text from a profile doc and send that in to a NotesStream. Success! I could now import my folder from a profile document.

Dim session As New NotesSession
	Dim db As NotesDatabase
	Dim importer As NotesDXLImporter
	Dim stream As notesstream
	Dim doc As notesdocument
	Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
	Set doc = db.GetProfileDocument("adminproftext")
	Set stream = session.CreateStream
	
	Call stream.WriteText(doc.GetItemValue("prodoc_body")(0))
	
	Call stream.WriteText(doc.GetItemValue("Body")(0))
	
	stream.Position = 0
	
	Set importer = session.CreateDXLImporter
	importer.ReplaceDBProperties = False
	importer.ReplicaRequiredForReplaceOrUpdate = False
	importer.ACLImportOption = DXLIMPORTOPTION_IGNORE
	importer.DesignImportOption = DXLIMPORTOPTION_CREATE
	Call importer.Import(stream, db)

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So this isn't the most exciting or advanced post in the world. We'll say it's DXL for Dummies. Meaning me.

Oh, and I'm very excited to try ls2html tool from nsftools.com in this post. Pretty cool, huh?