Scenarios of the Open XML SDK for JavaScript

Client-Side Open XML Applications that Run In-Browser

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You can build client-side Open XML applications that run in the browser.  This enables you to provide Open XML functionality to your users without requiring them to install an executable such as a .NET application. You might create an application to:

One interesting scenario is that there are a fair number of developer tools that we can build using the Open XML SDK for JavaScript.  Some ideas are:

Plans are that over time, we’ll be writing and hosting these applications here on EricWhite.com.

Currently, it is fairly easy to build a web-application with Open XML functionality using server-side technologies, such as the Open XML SDK from within an ASP.NET application.  However, if you can’t use the Open XML SDK and the .NET Framework, life becomes more difficult.  Supplying Open XML functionality in the browser has several advantages.

The Open XML SDK for JavaScript has been tested with IE 9, IE 10, Chrome 27.0, and FireFox 20.0.1.  As time allows, we will test against earlier versions of browsers.  To a certain extent, the Open XML SDK for JavaScript relies on modern JavaScript engines such as Chakra and Chrome V8.

Node.Js Server Applications

If you need to build server-side Open XML functionality, you can use Node.Js to implement the functionality, and then use interop to call Node.Js from Java, C++, or other server-side technologies.

It may be possible that the ability of Node.Js to take advantage of multiple cores may enable high-performance Open XML functionality.  This is a research project for the future.

One key use for Node.Js is testing your Open XML code.  After writing a few thousand lines of Open XML code in JavaScript, you will want to run that code over your library of test documents. You can structure your tests so that they are isolated from whether they run in the browser or run using Node, and then build a test harness to exercise your code with hundreds or thousands of test documents.

Touch-Enabled Windows-8 ‘Windows Store’ Applications

There is a lot of fun to be had with this scenario.  Combining touch, HTML5, CSS3, and Open XML presents interesting opportunities for writing collaboration and document manipulation applications.

Apps for Office Clients

When you are writing a JavaScript app for Word, you have the capability of retrieving the Open XML markup for any range of the document, modify it as appropriate, and then set the contents of the range.  Having the Open XML SDK for JavaScript enables a lot of interesting applications.

While it is possible to extend Office using VBA or VSTO in Windows 7 and Windows 8, with Windows RT, JavaScript is the only extensibility approach for the Office clients, so accessing Open XML using JavaScript becomes even more important.

Apps for SharePoint 2013

One of the easiest ways to extend SharePoint is to write JavaScript code.  It sidesteps all the issues associated with installing code on the server.  In some cases, it is difficult to install code on the server.  In others, it is completely prohibited.  So having the capability of writing Open XML applications in JavaScript makes it super-easy to add Open XML functionality to SharePoint.