WordprocessingML: Part 1

Let’s start with a public notice: Most of the OpenXML/WordprocessingML samples I’ve found work with TextWriters, and just write XML strings into the writer. Me, being the funny guy I am, prefer to work with XmlWriters. This makes sure I make no structure mistakes in the XML itself, allows me to generate well-formatted XML (useful during development), and just seems more natural to me.

Ok. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s start with the very basics – creating an empty Docx file:

Creating a WordprocessingDocument object

Nothing can be more simple than this. Just call the static method Create of the type WordprocessingDocument, provide a filename or stream, and select the type of document you want to create. There are several types of documents, defined in the WordprocessingDocumentType enumeration. For more details on this, just go to (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/documentformat.openxml.wordprocessingdocumenttype.aspx)Here’s the snippet:

using (WordprocessingDocument wpd = WordprocessingDocument.Create(filename, WordprocessingDocumentType.Document))
{
}

Notice how I used the using directive – WordprocessingDocument implements the IDisposable interface…

Adding the main part

Each document consist of multiple parts, the main part being the document content itself. Other types (which I’ll cover in future entries) include styles, numbering, properties and settings.
There’s nothing exciting in this part – we just ask our document to create a main part for itself, and we keep a reference to that part.

MainDocumentPart mainPart = wpd.AddMainDocumentPart();

Getting an XML writer

Each part implements a GetStream method, so this is mostly boiler plate code:

XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();
settings.Indent = true;
settings.IndentChars = "\t';
settings.Encoding = _new UTF8Encoding();
using (Stream stream = mainPart.GetStream())
using (XmlWriter xmlWr = XmlWriter.Create(stream, settings))
{
}

Adding content

I’m not going to go too deeply in this section – you can find various samples explaining the full structure of content in documents. For now, let’s just say that text goes into paragraphs. Paragraphs consist of runs, and runs contain text.

string wordmlNamespace = "http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main";
writer.WriteStartElement("p", wordmlNamespace);
writer.WriteStartElement("r", wordmlNamespace);
writer.WriteStartElement("t", wordmlNamespace);
writer.WriteValue("Hello word"); // NOT A TYPO! :)
writer.WriteEndElement(); // t
writer.WriteEndElement(); // r
writer.WriteEndElement(); // p

That’s it – you’re free to add content to your document as you see fit. Just don’t forget to call the Close method of the WordprocessingDocument instance, in order to save the file.