Template system & book

[herveParticipant]

Hello,

I don’t know if it’s the right place to post my questions, may be it will be better in Open-Xml-PowerTools (.Net) ..??

First question:
Do you know a book to recommand on Open Xml please (did you made one yourself)?

Second question:
I would like to know if it’s possible to do something, imagine a Word (docx) document with only one page. On this page I have a table with 2 rows and 3 columns (total of 6 cells).
Each cell can contains some text (a header title for example).

In each cell I want to insert the content of a document (docx) and generate a new document.
Each time I insert the content of one of the 6 files, I don’t want to loose formating (bold, italic, lists, hyperlinks etc)

I forgot to mention something, in this document I have, for each cell, a search text (a pattern) that matches the name of the file to put the content from.

For example, the first cell will contain the word “introduction” and I will have to replace this word with the content of the file “introduction.docx”

Is that possible (I’m using C#)?

Thank you bye advance.

Bye,
Hervé

• This topic was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by  herve.

[Eric WhiteKeymaster]

Hi Hervé,

I have not yet written a book, although I have thought a lot about it. What I have done instead is record many screen-casts/videos. The screen-cast series links are in the side bar on this blog, to the right. In particular, watch the screen-cast series on Introduction to Open XML, also watch introduction to WordprocessingML.

As far as templating systems goes, I am now recommending the approach that I take in the DocumentAssembler module. Please watch these two screen-casts:

http://www.ericwhite.com/blog/blog/documentassembler-developer-center/

DocumentBuilder may also be relevant to you. In particular, watch screen-cast #6 in this series:

http://www.ericwhite.com/blog/blog/documentbuilder-developer-center/

Best, Eric

[herveParticipant]

Hello Eric,

Thank you very much for your help, I will have a look to the videos.
Concerning the book, I will be very interested.

Thanks again.

Bye

[herveParticipant]

Hello Eric,

My project was just accepted so I’m starting to work on it but I’m completly lost and stuck on the code… A book will be really usefull.

I have a template document (modele.docx) with some content and let say, 3 special texts inside, like this :
{document1}
{document2}
{document3}

They represent the name of the file I have to insert content from (document1.docx, documen2.docx and document3.docx)

With the help of the video you suggested me (http://www.ericwhite.com/blog/advanced-use-of-documentbuilder), Im trying to :
1) Open the model
2) Search for everything that starts with { and ends with }
3) Replace it with an Id on the form “document1”, “document2” and “document3”
4) From a list of sources (document1.docx etc) create and generate a new document

Here is the code :

WmlDocument doc1 = new WmlDocument(@"C:\Winston\models\modele.docx");
using (MemoryStream mem = new MemoryStream())
{
	mem.Write(doc1.DocumentByteArray, 0, doc1.DocumentByteArray.Length);
	using (WordprocessingDocument doc = WordprocessingDocument.Open(mem, true))
	{
		XDocument xDoc = doc.MainDocumentPart.GetXDocument();
		foreach (XElement element in xDoc.Root.Element(W.body).Elements(W.p))
		{
			if (element == null)
				continue;

			if(element.Name == W.p)
			{
				string content = element.Value;
				if (content == null || content.Trim().Equals(""))
					continue;

				content = content.Trim();

				if(content.StartsWith("{") && content.EndsWith("}"))
				{
					string idName = content.Replace("{", string.Empty).Replace("}", string.Empty);
					MessageBox.Show(idName);
					element.ReplaceWith(new XElement(PtOpenXml.Insert, new XAttribute("Id", idName)));
				}
			}
		}
		doc.MainDocumentPart.PutXDocument();
	}
	doc1.DocumentByteArray = mem.ToArray();
}

string outFileName = @"C:\Winston\output\output.docx";
List<Source> sources = new List<Source>()
{
	new Source(doc1, true),
	new Source(new WmlDocument(@"C:\Winston\data\document1.docx"), "document1"),
	new Source(new WmlDocument(@"C:\Winston\data\document2.docx"), "document2"),
	new Source(new WmlDocument(@"C:\Winston\data\document3.docx"), "document3"),
};
DocumentBuilder.BuildDocument(sources, outFileName);

When I comment this line :

element.ReplaceWith(new XElement(PtOpenXml.Insert, new XAttribute("Id", idName)));

The code finds the 3 searched patterns but when I uncomment it, it only see the patterns one time…??
Do you have an idea of what I am doing wrong?

Thank you by advance.

Bye,
Hervé

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