javaeclipseoutlookcoledatetime

Date format for setting start and end date to Outlook appointment in java code


I am creating an appointment in Outlook through java code. here I can set new values to the fields in appointment. The code for it is

OleAutomation appointment = invoke(outlook, "CreateItem", 1).getAutomation();
appointment.setProperty(property(appointment, "Subject"), new Variant("Test"));

this code will set the subject field with the value "Test".

here i am using generic OLE mechanism "Variant" for passing data of different types via a common interface Now I want to know how to set a date for the appointment. Please help me..

Thanks in advance :)


Solution

  • As stated in my comment, the date in OLE are stored as the number of days since 1899-12-30. You can calculate that number easily. When you have it, pass-it to to the right OLE property using standard variant I think.

    Unfortunately I don't have SWT installed here and can't test the code, but it should look something like that

    public class Test {
        static Calendar OLE_BASE_DATE = Calendar.getInstance();
        static {
            OLE_BASE_DATE.set(1899, 11, 30); // 1899-12-30
        }
    
        static double oleDateFormat(Calendar cal) {
            long diff = cal.getTimeInMillis() - OLE_BASE_DATE.getTimeInMillis();
            return diff / 86400000L;
        }
    
        public static void main(String[] args) {
            // get outlook instance etc...
            OleAutomation appointment = invoke(outlook, "CreateItem", 1).getAutomation();
            appointment.setProperty(property(appointment, "Subject"), new Variant("Test"));
            // compute the appointment start & stop
            double todayAtNoon = oleDateFormat(Calendar.getInstance()) + 0.5;
            double todayAt13_12 = oleDateFormat(Calendar.getInstance()) + 0.55;
            // set the vars
            appointment.setProperty(property(appointment, "Start"), new Variant(String.valueOf(todayAtNoon)));
            appointment.setProperty(property(appointment, "End"), new Variant(String.valueOf(todayAt13_12)));
            appointment.setProperty(property(appointment, "Location"), new Variant("At foo's"));
            // do more stuff
        }
    }
    

    More info on the automation of Outlook can be found here for a complete example in VB