Filter(?) for Win32 OLE Find method

banduwgs has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am dealing with Win32::OLE Outlook.Application objects. I try to apply find method over an Items collection object in following code.

$item = $items->Find( 
            '[Subject] = Test Subject 01'
        );
[download]

This works fine with entire field name. (It has the power of case ignore and ignoring parts like "RE:" at the begining.)

I want to modify it to match even a portion of the given field. i.e It should return same item set (probebly more) providing the filter string '[Subject] = Test' instead of '[Subject] = Test Subject 01' in the above code

MSDN Filter Syntax Reference discuss the operator Contain, but I can't apply it in Perl. Do you have any suggesion?

Thanks in advance - SB

Comment on Filter(?) for Win32 OLE Find method Select or Download Code

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Re: Filter(?) for Win32 OLE Find method by tcf22 (Priest) on Aug 06, 2003 at 16:17 UTC
This is the best I could come up with. I can't find anyway except for looping through the messages. Also make sure to import the `in` method, because it isn't imported by default. `#! /usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Win32::OLE qw( in ); #Outlook Application creation my $outlook = Win32::OLE->CreateObject('Outlook.Application'); my $ns = $outlook->getNamespace('MAPI'); my $inbox = $ns->GetDefaultFolder(6); #String to match my $match_str = 'test'; #Search the items foreach my $item (in $inbox->Items){ if($item->{Subject} =~ /^$match_str/i){ print "$item->{Subject} matches\n"; } }` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Filter(?) for Win32 OLE Find method by banduwgs (Beadle) on Aug 06, 2003 at 17:13 UTC
Yes this is fine, but I don't like much looping through all items :-(. "Find" method seems fairly optimize on this perspective. It suports searching portions of string in VB scripts. That's why I thought that there should be a way to activate it in Perl as well Thanks a lot for your attention. Do you or any others... further comments please?? - SB	[reply]
Re: Filter(?) for Win32 OLE Find method by cacharbe (Curate) on Aug 06, 2003 at 17:50 UTC
This isn't a true DASL filter, so you end up having to use ranges, in a sense. Unfortunately, you can't use Contains, DoesNotContain, etc. from the filter object reference, as you would with the Search objects. It's a little different. The following will help you find a range of subjects all between 'test' and 'tz': use strict; use Win32::OLE qw(in with); use Win32::OLE::Const 'Microsoft Outlook'; $\|++; $Win32::OLE::Warn = 3; my $OL = Win32::OLE->GetActiveObject('Outlook.Application') \|\| Win32::OLE->new('Outlook.Application', 'Quit'); my $NameSpace = $OL->GetNameSpace("MAPI"); my $Folder = $NameSpace->GetDefaultFolder(olFolderInbox); my $Items = $Folder->{Items}; my $findtext = '[Subject] > "test" and [Subject] < "tz"'; my $MailItems = $Items->Find($findtext); while (1) { print $MailItems->{Subject} ."\n"; $MailItems = $Items->FindNext() \|\| last; } [download] And one should note the following (from the Outlook VB Reference): `Comparison operators allowed within the filter expression include >,<, +<=, >=,= and <>. Logical operators allowed are And Not and Or` [download] *Update:* Slight modification to search string and Text from Find Object Reference. C-. --- Flex the Geek	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Filter(?) for Win32 OLE Find method by banduwgs (Beadle) on Aug 07, 2003 at 08:06 UTC
Thank you very much for the clarification. It's really helpful - SB	[reply]


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