Pole: portable library for structured storage

Download

Use Bitbucket repository for contributing to the project, accessing the source code online, filing bug reports and checking what's new.

How to use

To compile POLE, you need a C++ compiler, with standard C++ library which supports STL (Standard Template Library).

POLE is just a library, you have to integrate it as part of your application/project. Since it consists of one source file and one header file, it does not make much sense to compile POLE as separate library (either static or dynamic). Simply add these files to your project and you are done.

The source tarball of POLE demonstrates the use of POLE to build poledump, a small utility to extract any stream inside a structured storage. If you use g++ as the compiler, you can compile poledump using the following command:

g++ -o poledump pole.cpp poledump.cpp

You may use poledump like the example below:

poledump budget.xls Workbook result.xls

The above command will extract a stream named Workbook inside Excel document (budget.xls) and save it as result.xls. File result.xls will still be recognized as a valid workbook (in raw format). Launch Microsoft Excel, open this file, and convince yourself.

To compile POLEView, you need Qt (from Trolltech) version 4.x. Most Linux distributions normally already package the latest version of Qt, so it is likely that you need to worry about this. The build command for poleview is:

qmake && make

Platforms

POLE has been succesfully tested under the following platforms/compilers:

Microsoft Windows: Microsoft Visual C++ 2008, Borland C++ Compiler 5.5.1, OpenWatcom 1.3, Microsoft Visual C++, Digital Mars C/C++ 8.41n
Linux: GCC 4.x (including 4.3), GCC 3.x (may also work with 2.9.x), Intel C++ compiler

If you can compile and use POLE in another platform/compiler, please kindly send a report.

Links

POLE is being proposed to be included in the next release of Boost. The interface for Boost has been written by Israel Cabrera (israel@segurmatica.com) and Jorge Lodos Vigil (lodos@segurmatica.com). See polepp project for details.

There are also other projects which have the same goal as POLE.

Libgsf (from Jody Golberg), written in plain C (with glib dependency), is also able to read and write structured storage. If you're in Linux/Unix, please use libgsf instead of POLE because libgsf has more features, well developed, and mature already.

Should you want to access structured storage with Java, Jakarta POI is your best choice. If you're interested in the internals of structured storage, you can refer to its excellent documentation.

There is also libole2, but I believe this is already obsoleted by libgsf.

WINE project has its own implementation of structured storage.

Few projects still use cole from Roberto Arturo Tena Sanchez. You can check cole from xlhtml project.

Laola, a small Perl utility, is among the first project which tries to reverse engineer the format of structured storage.

Copyright and License

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name of the authors nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.