Feature Request: Task-level time-phased cost data access

[CaideSpries]

Summary

I'm building a dashboard that reads MS Project (.mpp) files using MPXJ. I need to access task-level time-phased cost data (monthly cost breakdown), similar to VBA's Task.TimeScaleData() method.

Currently, MPXJ only provides time-phased data at the ResourceAssignment level:

• ResourceAssignment.getTimephasedCost()
• ResourceAssignment.getTimephasedActualCost()
• ResourceAssignment.getTimephasedBaselineCost(int)

The Problem

For budget tasks (tasks without resource assignments), there is no way to get time-phased cost data in MPXJ, even though:

1. MS Project stores this data at the task level
2. VBA can read it via Task.TimeScaleData(StartDate, EndDate, pjTaskTimescaledCost, pjTimescaleMonths)

This causes my dashboard to show ~40% of the values compared to a VBA-based Excel export.

Request

Would it be possible to add task-level time-phased cost methods to the Task class?

For example:

• Task.getTimephasedCost()
• Task.getTimephasedActualCost()
• Task.getTimephasedBaselineCost(int baselineNumber)

Questions

1. Does MPXJ read task-level time-phased data from MPP files but not expose it?
2. If not, is this data stored in a known location in the MPP binary format?
3. Would you be open to a contribution that adds this functionality?

Environment

• MPXJ Version: 15.0.0
• File Format: MPP (MS Project 2019)
• Access Method: Python via JPype

References

• Task.TimeScaleData VBA Method
• PjTaskTimescaledData Enumeration

Thank you for maintaining this excellent library!

[joniles]

Thanks for leaving this request. I'm currently working on rewriting timephased data support in MPXJ and the end result will include timephased data rolled up to the task level.

[CaideSpries]

Thank you Jon! That's great news. We're currently using a VBA Excel export workaround, but having task-level timephased data in MPXJ would be a much cleaner solution. Looking forward to the update!

[joniles]

I've just release MPXJ 16.0.0 which includes the functionality to roll up timephased data to Tasks and ResourceAssignments. Note that the API for retrieving timephased data has changed somewhat (hopefully for the better). Let me know if you have any questions arising from this.