REALbasic Tip: Creating text files for specific applications

[Geoff Perlman <geoff at realsoftware dot com>]

When you create a text file using the CreateTextFile function of the
folderitem class, the file type and creator information is ignored. 
This can
be a problem when you want to create a text file that when 
double-clicked
will open a specific application (like Excel for example). The solution 
is
to create a binary file rather than a text file.

In the example below, a binarystream is used rather than a 
textoutputstream
and a binary file is created using CreateBinaryFile rather than
CreateTextFile. Since the file created is an Excel text file, columns 
are
separated with a tab and rows with a carriage return. As you can see 
from
the example, you can even include formulas.

  dim f as FolderItem
  dim output as BinaryStream
  f= GetSaveFolderItem("application/vnd.ms-excel", "test.xls")
  if f <> nil then
    output = f.CreateBinaryFile("application/vnd.ms-excel")
    output.write "5" + chr(9) + "10" + chr(13)
    output.write "=a1+b1"
    output.close
  end if
--
Geoff Perlman
President and CEO
REAL Software, Inc.
512-328-7325 x711 (voice)
512-328-7372 (fax)


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