Retrieving Standard Metaproperties (Visual Basic)

A Guide Store repository contains many MetaPropertyType objects that can be used by an application. Some of these are of standard types; others are defined by the implementation.

The procedure to access a standard MetaPropertyType object is as follows.

1. Call GuideStore.MetaPropertySets. This property returns a MetaPropertySets collection that contains all MetaPropertySet objects in the Guide Store.
2. Look up the name of the MetaPropertySet and the name of the MetaPropertyType. For a table of standard MetaPropertySet collections and MetaPropertyType objects, see Standard Metaproperties. Create a string consisting of the two names separated by a period; for example, "Categories.Action".
3. Pass the string to MetaPropertySets.Lookup to retrieve the MetaPropertyType object.

The last step is equivalent to retrieving the MetaPropertySet object called "Categories" by using MetaPropertySets.Item, then retrieving the associated MetaPropertyTypes collection by using MetaPropertySet.MetaPropertyTypes, and finally calling MetaPropertyTypes.ItemWithName to retrieve the MetaPropertyType object named "Action".

After you have retrieved a MetaPropertyType object, you can retrieve all MetaProperty objects of that type from a collection by using MetaProperties.ItemsWithMetaPropertyType.