Exporting and importing data

Introduction

Created projects data are saved in files in mobile memory, and may be lost if uninstalling the program, malfunction or change of equipment.

Project data (and results) created in program private memories can be transferred to a public extended memory directory and thus not lost when the program is uninstalled, but can be lost in the event of malfunctions.

Export functions allow you to save project data or results by sending them to other mobile applications (for example, to save them in the "cloud"), or to put them in mobile public memory in order to share them with other applications. 

The import functions are used to import project data files. These files may have been previously created by this application and exported, on your mobile or another mobile, or may have been created by other applications, for example Planning project plus or MS Project (mpp or xml files) and may not be directly accessible due to access restrictions with recent versions of Android. 

Project data files

Data of each project is saved in an "xml" file. The format of these files is the same for Project planning and Project planning plus.
Android does not take in account "case" (capital or small letter) in extended memory file names. The program does same when comparing them, in order that file names are unique in each folder and avoid file overwriting.

It does same for project names whose file names are derived. And to avoid problems when exporting files, it forbids in project names (and file names) characters that may give problems in files managing systems " \ / " ? < > ; : ".

Exporting projects data

Exporting saves the projects data, you may choose:

• putting them as an attachment to an email application and calling a mail application ( if you have several mail applications initialized with an email account you will have to choose , if you have none you will get a message indicating it),

• sending the data to an application taking into account "xml " files, for instance application "Drive" that saves in the "cloud ",

• sending the data to mobile public memory place chosen by the user. 

More other mobile applications may launch "Project Planning" to select a file to import and import it. You can for example from the application "Drive" import a project data file and save it in the "cloud".

Data import

Several modes for importing project files are provided:

•  the import function presented below which allows you to open a project file located in the public extended memory of the mobile or that can be provided by a file server such as Google Drive, 

• the call of this program by another mobile application by opening a project file (xml or mpp) and selecting this program, 

•  finally, when the version of Android allows access, you will be able to open project files created by other programs (for example Planning project plus or MS Project) and placed in the public directories of this program.

The import function

 In the welcome screen, the Import file menu command displays 4 options (xml, xml without filtering, mpp, mpp without filtering) and after choosing an option activates the import function, the Android file selection box is displayed, you can browse the directories and file servers displayed, select a project file, and the program opens the project. You can then save this project in the private or public directories of the program.

With the xml option you can only select xml files, and with the mpp option only mpp files. However, the filtering is done on the "mime type" which has been assigned to the file and there are multiple variants of these "mime types". The options without filtering allow you to select a file that is hidden by the filtering.

The project files created by Planning project plus can be placed, depending on the version of the program, in two directories located in the "Downloads" directory: "ProjectPlanning" or "ProjectPlanningPlusReserved". If these directories are not displayed in the selection box, depending on the version of Android you will have to search for them in Downloads or in SDCard. 

"Xml" file and " mime type "

The project data is written to a "xml" file. This file uses the encoding selected by default with Java in the creation of "xml" files, the UTF-8 code .

The encoding of the file is entered in the first line of the file , so it is not an ordinary text file and to transmit it, its "mime type" file is normally "application/xml" .

Unfortunately, many applications do not take into account this "mime type" and the coding inscribed in the file, and see the xml files as text files ( "mime type" "text/xml") ,do not take into account the coding part of the files, and read with another code (often the ISO 8859-1 code) , where problems with some characters (accented letters in particular) .

This program put  "application/xml" as mime type when sending files , and take in account the two mime types to access to files. 

Mime type for mpp files

For  MS Project mpp files, the standard mime type is "application/vnd.ms-project". It is used by Google applications (Drive, Gmail) and is retained by this program.

Unfortunately, half a dozen variants of this "mime type" can be found, one of these variants "application/octet-stream" is taken into account, but applications that have chosen one of the other variants will not be able to transmit mpp files.