http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=281408

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'
        );

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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

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
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";
    }
}

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      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

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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;     
   }

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    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

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    Update: Slight modification to search string and Text from Find Object Reference.

    C-.

    ---
    Flex the Geek

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      Thank you very much for the clarification. It's really helpful - SB
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