KeyView 24.1

# What is Metadata?

Documents may contain information about the document itself: we call this metadata. For instance, a raster image file contains metadata recording the image's width and height; a word processing document may contain metadata recording the document's author and title. Metadata can be represented by key-value pairs. For instance, a document's title can be represented as the key "Title" and the value "Annual Report". We refer to a single metadata key-value pair as a metadata field.

Containers (documents with subfiles) can contain metadata about their subfiles. For instance, a Personal Folders (`.pst`) file is a container that can have multiple email messages as subfiles. A PST file may contain metadata, including the "To" and "From" fields of these subfiles.

## Access Metadata using the C API

You can access document metadata using the Filter interface function fpGetMetadataList().

You can access subfile metadata using the Extract interface function fpGetSubFileMetadataList().

These functions have different signatures, but both output a KVMetadataList struct, so the output from both functions can be used in the same way.

KeyView uses the structures KVMetadataList and KVMetadataElement to store metadata.

- The KVMetadataList structure represents a list of KVMetadataElement objects, allowing you to iterate over them. The order of elements within the list is not significant and may change in the future.
- The KVMetadataElement structure represents one metadata field. It contains a string representation of the field’s key, and the field’s value stored in an appropriate type.

## Mail Metadata

The metadata for an e-mail message (the header fields such as "To", "CC", "Subject", and so on) are typically stored in the mail container (such as an MSG or EML file). To access this metadata you can call the function fpGetSubFileMetadataList(), in the Extract API.

The message body and any attachments are considered by KeyView as subfiles of the container. When you extract the message body, KeyView includes the header fields (by default). If you do not want to include this information, set the flag KVExtractionFlag_ExcludeMailHeader when you call fpExtractSubFile(). You might want to do this if you have already accessed the metadata and do not want to process it again.

## Backwards Compatibility

To help you migrate from `fpGetOLESummaryInfo` to `fpGetMetadataList`, KeyView reproduces the output of `fpGetOLESummaryInfo` in the output of `fpGetMetadataList`. For each `KVSummaryInfoEx` object `sumInfo` that would be output by `fpGetOLESummaryInfo`, the output of `fpGetMetadataList` will contain a KVMetadataElement object `metaElem` such that `metaElem.pKey` contains the name in `sumInfo.pcType`, and and `metaElem.pValue` contains the value represented by `sumInfo.data`. Where KeyView can standardize the field represented by `sumInfo`, the output of `fpGetMetadataList` also contains that standardized field.

To help you migrate from fpGetSubFileMetaData() to fpGetSubFileMetadataList(), KeyView reproduces the `default` and `all` metadata sets output by fpGetSubFileMetaData() in the output of fpGetSubFileMetadataList(). The `default` metadata set is output by fpGetSubFileMetaData() when the `metaNameCount` member of the `KVGetSubFileMetaArgRec` argument is set to 0, and the `all` metadata set is output when `metaNameCount` is set to -1. For each valid `KVMetadataElem` object `metaElemOld` in the `default` and `all` output of `fpGetSubFileMetaData`, the output of fpGetSubFileMetadataList() will contain a KVMetadataElement object `metaElemNew` such that `metaElemNew.pKey` contains the name in `metaElemOld.strType`, and `metaElemNew.pValue` contains the value represented by `metaElemOld.data`. Where KeyView can standardize the field represented by `metaElemOld`, the output of `fpGetMetadataList` also contains that standardized field.

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Version 24.1 | Last updated December 2023

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Product: IDOL KeyView 24.1

Topic Title: What is Metadata?