This post introduces our new commercial component for docx to PDF output.

The background is that docx4j’s standard method of producing PDF output has been via XSL FO, using Apache FOP.

This has worked well enough for some docx4j users, but it has certain limitations which can bite you, for example lack of tab and tab stop support in XSL FO.

And because there are differences between FOP’s layout engine and Word’s, page breaks may fall in different places.

This means the FO based PDF output in docx4j is about as good as its going to get (short of enhancing the FO renderer).

To do better, we’ve had to invest in a non-FO approach, using layout algorithms specifically designed to give the same results Word does.

You can try it now.

A side benefit is that this new approach is much faster than the FO approach.

The component is actually independent of docx4j.  This means it’ll also work great  if you need to convert docx to PDF from C# (without Word), Python, PHP etc.

Pricing is at plutext.com

The dream:

• View Open XML right from within Word, and see what happens when you edit it.
• Or generate corresponding docx4j Java code, with deep links into the corresponding docx4j source code and Open XML spec.

Regular users of docx4j will be aware of our webapp, which amongst other things, generates docx4j Java code for the specified Open XML in your sample docx/pptx/xlsx.

The webapp is useful, but it has a few draw backs:

• you have to upload your docx/pptx/xlsx, which takes time
• if your docx/pptx/xlsx contains sensitive data, you probably want to remove that first
• the webapp might be down

To address these issues, we’re now offering the code gen functionality as a Word AddIn.

If you install the Word AddIn, this means you can now generate code without your docx leaving your computer.

This is all feasible because docx4j can run as a DLL in a .NET project, thanks to IKVM!

Where to get it

You can download the installer.  After you complete the landing form (using your corporate email address, not gmail etc), you’ll be sent a download link.

Getting Started

After a successful installation, after restarting Word, you should see a “Docx4j” menu, containing:

To generate code, first press the “Load Helper” button.

You’ll see the following form:

Its inviting you to start a local web server which will run the same code as the existing webapp.  Just choose a port you aren’t already using.  If for some reason you want to browse using Internet Explorer (as opposed to your default browser), check the box.

It’ll take a little while to start the server; you’ll see a dialog when its started.

Now you can generate code.  To do so, select something in your docx, then click the “Generate Code” button.

After a while, a window will open in your web browser, and you’ll see:

That’s the view of the docx package, which will be familiar if you’ve used the webapp.   For how to generate code from here, see our earlier post.

Code generating is done on your computer.  (But note, the links on that page to docx4j source code and the OpenXML spec are external links)

What about the “Edit OpenXML” button?

If you select something in your docx, then click that button, after a while (maybe 30 secs the first time!), you’ll see the corresponding XML in an editor window:

You can go ahead and edit it, then click the “Apply” button.

If Word likes your XML, you’ll see your changes on the document surface.  Ctrl Z should work for undo.

So there are 2 ways to see the underlying XML

The first way we described uses your web browser; the second is a Windows Form.

These two views have different features; maybe a later release will unify them?

What about pptx, xlsx?

There’s no reason in principle we couldn’t make a similar AddIn for Powerpoint and Excel.  In fact, we plan to make these, once any teething issues have been ironed out in the WordAddIn.

In the meantime, for pptx and xlsx, you can continue to use the webapp.

Help, Suggestions and other Discussion

If you are a Plutext customer experiencing an issue, please email support@plutext.com

Otherwise, please check the Docx4jHelper AddIn forum.

We’ve got some ideas for where the AddIn goes from here, but we’d love to hear yours.

Following on from the previous post on content tracking, some people have been asking about how to edit a docx in a web browser.

So I thought I’d link to a proof of concept we did a year or so ago.

The idea is:

• use docx4j to convert the docx to XHTML
• use CKEditor to edit that XHTML in the web browser
• on submit, convert the XHTML back to docx content

The general problem with converting to/from XHTML is the “impendance mismatch”.  That is, losing stuff during round trip.  This will be a familiar problem to anyone who has ever edited a docx in Google Docs or LibreOffice.

This demo addresses that problem by identifying docx content which CKEditor would mangle, and then on submit/save, using the original docx content for those bits.

In this demo, the problematic content is replaced with visual placeholders, so you can see it is there.

The intent is that you can add/edit text content in the browser, without other document content (headers/footers, text boxes etc) getting lost.

To give it a try, go to the upload page and choose a docx file from your computer

You should see your docx open with the CKEditor toolbars above it:

(In the demo and screenshot above, the grey “B” image represents a bookmark)

Make some edits, then hit the Submit button (at the bottom).

The docx will be streamed back to your computer as a download in your browser.

Now open it in Word, and compare it to the original.

Feedback

If you want to add this type of functionality to your application, please let us know by emailing jharrop@plutext.com

We’d love to hear:

• a bit more about your use case,
• where you see your users doing their web-based editing:- on your intranet, extranet, or the web at large?
• what kind of editing? is it proof reading,  customising particular sections, a step in a workflow..?
• do you need to cater for iPads or Android tablets?  And if so, is a dedicated app on your roadmap?
• any additional requirements you might have!

Update (Oct 2015)

Source code is available at https://github.com/plutext/docx-html-editor

How to convert import HTML into a Word document without using Microsoft Word?

Honouring the CSS, so the Word document looks similar to the input XHTML.  Alternatively, converting @class values to Word styles.

Its a common requirement in our increasingly web-centric world.

docx4j-ImportXHTML.NET is open source (LGPL v2.1 or later), identical to the Java version, but made into a DLL using IKVM.  Currently we’re at v3.2.0, released last week.

It is easy to test; with very little effort, you can run it from a sample project in Visual Studio.  Its very easy, because docx4j-ImportXHTML.NET is in the NuGet.org repository:

To create your sample project:

1. make sure you have NuGet Package Manager installed
   • for VS 2012 and later, its installed by default
   • for VS 2010, NuGet is available through the Visual Studio Extension Manager; see the above link.
2. create a new project in Visual Studio (File > New > Project).  A Console Application is fine.  I chose that from the .NET 3.5 list.
3. from the Tools menu, choose NuGet Package Manager > Package Manager Console
4. type Install-Package docx4j-ImportXHTML.NET

You should see something like:

And then, your project/solution will be populated to look like:

We’re nearly there!  Notice the docx4j-ImportXHTML DLL, and the file src/samples/c_sharp/docx/ConvertInXHTMLFragment.cs.  Most of the rest of the stuff comes from the docx4j dependency, which NuGet fetches.

If you have a look at ConvertInXHTMLFragment.cs, you’ll see it contains

Let’s run it, to convert that xhtml to docx content.

Click on your project in Solution Explorer, then right click (or hit Alt+Enter) to get the properties pane:

Then set the “startup object” as shown in the above image.

Now you can hit Ctrl+F5 (“Start without Debugging”) – you don’t want to debug, since that’s really slow.

You should see some logging in the console window, culminating in something like:

Obviously, you can modify src/samples/c_sharp/Docx4NET/DocxToPDF.cs to read your own XHTML.

A few comments.

Well formed XML! Only well formed XML works, ie XHTML, not tag-soup HTML.  If you have tag soup, its your responsibility to convert that to XHTML with some tidy tool.   You’ll get a SAXParseException if your input is not well formed.

Word styles: if the target docx contains a style matching @class, it can be used.  This’ll be the subject of a separate blog post.

Other examples: the Java repository on GitHub contains examples for reading from a file etc.  Converting these to C# is left as an exercise for the reader.  If you do that, we’d be delighted to receive a pull request on https://github.com/plutext/docx4j-ImportXHTML.NET

Logging, Commons Logging. Logging is via Commons Logging.  In the demo, it is configured programmatically (ie in  DocxToPDF.cs).  Alternatively, you could do it in app.config.

OpenXML SDK interop: src/main/c_sharp/Plutext/Docx4NET contains code for converting between a docx4j representation of a docx package, and the Open XML SDK’s representation.

Improving XHTML import support. To implement a new feature in the XHTML import, typically you’d make the improvement to docx4j-ImportXHTML first (ie the Java version), then create a new DLL using the ant build target dist.NET.   docx4j-ImportXHTML is on GitHub, and is most easily setup using Maven (see earlier blog post).

Alternatives. There are a couple of projects on CodePlex you could try:

• html2openxml
• htmltodocx (PHP)

I’d be interested in feedback on how they compare.

Help/support/discussion. You can post in the docx4j XHTML import forum, or on StackOverflow (be sure to use tag docx4j, plus some/all of c#, docx, xhtml etc as you think appropriate).  Please don’t cross post at both!

By now we’re used to products which emit docx files which are umm, not .. quite .. right.

But its more noteworthy when the product in question is from Microsoft.  After all, its their file format (ECMA etc standardisation notwithstanding).

The product in question here is SQL Server Reporting Services 2012 and its Word export.

It seems they didn’t bother to validate their documents (eg using Open XML SDK 2.0 Productivity Tool):

Apparently there’s a reason for this:

“Word and SSRS treat page headers and footers differently. Word actually positions them inside the page margins, whereas SSRS positions them inside the area that the margins surround. As a result, in Word, the page margins do not control the distance between the top edge of the page and that of the page header (or similarly for the page footer). Instead, Word has separate “Header from Top” and “Footer from Bottom” properties to control those distances. Since RDL does not have equivalent properties, the Word renderer sets these properties to zero.”

Another problem:

JAXB doesn’t like invalid documents, so docx4j has to fix these sorts of things before it can construct a content model.  (Maybe that’s why SSRS calls it Word export, not docx export:- they just check Word can open the document, then call it job done)

There are other problems with SSRS docx which the Productivity Tool doesn’t report.

Take a look at the styles part:

Notice anything wrong?  It’d be better if the EmptyCellLayoutStyle had @w:styleId and @w:type, like so:

It’d also be nice if it defined the “Normal” style it is basedOn!

docx4j and other consumers could/should detect such problems and degrade gracefully in the face of them, but Microsoft (of all companies!) should exercise better quality control.

Here’s a single A4 page reference/overview of docx4j aka a cheat sheet, in PDF or PNG format.

This one is focused on docx files (WordprocessingML).

I’ll create something similar for pptx and xlsx over coming days.

Just launched is http://webapp.docx4java.org

You should be able to see it in the menu at the top right of this website (if not, reload the web page…).

There are three things you can do with it right now:

• Explore your docx/pptx/xlsx and its representation in docx4j

• Convert  docx to PDF or XSL FO

• Merge docx files (eg cover letter plus contract) into a single docx, using Plutext’s MergeDocx. Or the same thing for pptx files, using MergePptx.

Here I want to focus on the first of these.

After you’ve uploaded your docx/pptx/xlsx, the first thing you see is like docx4j’s PartsList sample:

Here, I’ll click in the left hand column to look at the main document part, document.xml

When I do that, I see the XML:

No surprises there.

But notice the hyperlinks.  Here I’ll just click on the first w:p.

What you get back, is Java source code to create that complete structure:-

As you can see from the image above, both styles of code (as described in docx4j’s Getting Started document) are produced for you.  With a bit of luck, you can cut/paste either into your IDE (Eclipse or whatever), and just run with it!

To actually see the created object in an Office document, you’ll still need to add the created object to a part.  See Getting Started, or the cheat sheet for how to do that.

I hope this helps you to create/modify your Office documents more efficiently,with docx4j!

Do let us know what you think in the comments, or in docx4j’s forums.

I’m pleased to announce the release today of docx4j 2.7.0.

What is docx4j?

docx4j is an open source (Apache v2) library for creating, editing, and saving OpenXML “packages”, including docx, pptx, and xslx.  it is similar to Microsoft’s OpenXML SDK, but for Java rather than .NET.   It uses JAXB to create the Java objects out of the OpenXML parts.

Notable features for docx include export as HTML or PDF, and CustomXML databinding for document generation (including our OpenDoPE convention support for processing repeats and conditions).

The docx4j project started in October 2007.

What’s new?

This is mainly a maintenance release; things of note include:

• Improvements to Maven build
• ContentAccessor interface
• AlteredParts: identify parts in this pkg which are new or altered; Patcher
  which adds new or altered parts.
• Support for .glox SmartArt package (/src/glox/)
• JAXB RI 2.2.3 compatibilty
• OpenDoPE support improvements

Where do you get it?

Binaries: You can download a jar alone or a tar.gz with all deps or pick and choose.

Source: Checkout the source from SVN (use the pom.xml file to satisfy the dependencies eg with m2eclipse, or download them from one of the links above)

Maven: Please see forum for details (since XML doesn’t paste nicely here right now).

Dependency changes

Antlr is now required for OpenDoPE processing; this gives us better XPath processing.  The required jars are:

• antrl-2.7.7
• antrl-runtime-3.3
• stringtemplate-3.2.1

Getting Started

See the “Getting Started” guide.

Thanks to our contributors

A number of contributions have made this release what it is; thanks very much to those who contributed.

Contributors to this release and a more complete list of changes may be found in README.txt

A request to docx4j users

If you are happily using docx4j, it would be great if you could reply to this post with some words of recommendation for others who might be wondering whether docx4j is a good choice. I know there are thousands of you out there

Some users have been kind enough to make such statements already; these may be found on the trac homepage.

Of course, there are a number of other ways you can contribute back.  Please consider doing so, especially if you think you might find yourself looking for support from volunteers in the docx4j forums.

I’ve written a utility to merge docx documents in Java.  “Merge” as in concatenate/join/append, as opposed to diff/merge (although docx4j does include code to do a diff, if you are looking for that instead).

With the utility, you can take 2 or more Word documents, and join them into one.

Edit Feb 2014. MergeDocx is now part of Plutext’s Docx4j Enterprise Edition.

As Eric White’s blog explained:

This programming task is complicated by the need to keep other parts of the document in sync with the data stored in paragraphs. For example, a paragraph can contain a reference to a comment in the comments part, and if there is a problem with this reference, the document is invalid. You must take care when moving / inserting / deleting paragraphs to maintain ‘referential integrity’ within the document.

With this utility, merging/concatenating documents is as easy as invoking the method:

public  WordprocessingMLPackage merge(List<WordprocessingMLPackage> wmlPkgs)

In other words, you pass a list of docx, and get a single new docx back.

Edit March 2014. You can try the MergeDocx and/or MergePptx functionality via the demo webapp.

This utility takes care of the niggly edge cases for you:

You can also use my MergeDocx utility to process a docx which is embedded as an altChunk.

Without this utility, you had to rely on Word to convert the altChunk to normal content.

That meant you had to round trip your docx through Word, before docx4j could create a PDF or HTML out of it.

Now you don’t.

To process the w:altChunk elements in a docx, you invoke:

public WordprocessingMLPackage process(WordprocessingMLPackage srcPackage)

You pass in a docx containg altChunks, and get a  new docx back which doesn’t.

But wait a minute .. if you can merge Word documents using this tool, why would you ever put an altChunk (containing a docx, as opposed to HTML) into the docx in the first place?

Ordinarily you wouldn’t, you’d just merge with this tool instead.  But there are at least 2 possibilities:

• some upstream process put the altChunk there, and now you want to process it in docx4j
• OpenDoPE.  The Open Document Processing Ecosystem convention is being extended in a v2.3 to allow other documents to be injected, and a natural thing is to convert an injection instruction to an altChunk.  Edit Feb 2014: docx4j 3.0.1 can also bind an XML element containing a base64 encoded docx, inserting it into the docx as an AltChunk.  MergeDocx can then convert that content into “real” docx content, suitable for including in a table of contents, or generating HTML or PDF.  The binding is two-way, so user edits in Word can be injected back into the XML (eg for persisting to a database).

There is one place my code differs significantly from how Word processes an altChunk, and that is in section handling.  When Word processes an altChunk, it seems to largely remove sectPr.  So for example, columns will disappear.  But it also might merge headers, so the resulting header contains stuff from the headers of both documents!  My code doesn’t do that: by default, it includes each section, and headers go with sections.

I’m pleased to announce the release of docx4j v2.3.0

docx4j is an open source (Apache license) project which facilitates the manipulation of Microsoft OpenXML docx (and now pptx) documents in Java, using JAXB.

The main features of this release are support for pptx files, and improvements to HTML export (via NG2), and PDF export (via XSL FO).

For further details, please see the release announcement.