How to insert text into a content control with the Open XML SDK

Question

I'm trying to develop a solution which takes the input from a ASP.Net Web Page and Embed the input values into Corresponding Content Controls within a MS Word Document. The MS Word Document has also got Static Data with some Dynamic data to be Embed into the Header and Footer fields.

The Idea here is that the solution should be Web based. Can I use OpenXML for this purpose or any other approach that you can suggest.

Thank you very much in advance for all your valuable inputs. I really appreciate them.

Answer 1

I have a little code sample from my project, to insert a few words in a content control you've created in a Word document:

public static WordprocessingDocument InsertText(this WordprocessingDocument doc, string contentControlTag, string text)
{
    SdtElement element = doc.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body.Descendants<SdtElement>()
      .FirstOrDefault(sdt => sdt.SdtProperties.GetFirstChild<Tag>()?.Val == contentControlTag);

    if (element == null)
      throw new ArgumentException($"ContentControlTag \"{contentControlTag}\" doesn't exist.");

    element.Descendants<Text>().First().Text = text;
    element.Descendants<Text>().Skip(1).ToList().ForEach(t => t.Remove());

    return doc;
}

It simply looks for the first contentcontrol in the document with a specific Tag (you can set that by enabling designer mode in word and right-clicking on the content control), and replaces the current text with the text passed into the method. After this the document will still contain the content controls of course which may not be desired. So when I'm done editing the document I run the following method to get rid of the content controls:

internal static WordprocessingDocument RemoveSdtBlocks(this WordprocessingDocument doc, IEnumerable<string> contentBlocks)
{
    List<SdtElement> SdtBlocks = doc.MainDocumentPart.Document.Descendants<SdtElement>().ToList();

    if (contentBlocks == null)
        return doc;

    foreach(var s in contentBlocks)
    {
        SdtElement currentElement = SdtBlocks.FirstOrDefault(sdt => sdt.SdtProperties.GetFirstChild<Tag>()?.Val == s);
        if (currentElement == null)
            continue;
        IEnumerable<OpenXmlElement> elements = null;

        if (currentElement is SdtBlock)
            elements = (currentElement as SdtBlock).SdtContentBlock.Elements();
        else if (currentElement is SdtCell)
            elements = (currentElement as SdtCell).SdtContentCell.Elements();
        else if (currentElement is SdtRun)
            elements = (currentElement as SdtRun).SdtContentRun.Elements();

        foreach (var el in elements)
            currentElement.InsertBeforeSelf(el.CloneNode(true));
        currentElement.Remove();
    }
    return doc;
}

To open the WordProcessingDocument from a template and edit it, there is plenty of information available online.

Edit:

Little sample code to open/save documents while working with them in a memorystream, of course you should take care of this with an extra repository class that takes care of managing the document in the real code:

byte[] byteArray = File.ReadAllBytes(@"C:\...\Template.dotx");

using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
{
    stream.Write(byteArray, 0, byteArray.Length);

    using (WordprocessingDocument doc = WordprocessingDocument.Open(stream, true))
    {
       //Needed because I'm working with template dotx file, 
       //remove this if the template is a normal docx. 
        doc.ChangeDocumentType(DocumentFormat.OpenXml.WordprocessingDocumentType.Document);
        doc.InsertText("contentControlName","testtesttesttest");
    }
    using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(@"C:\...\newFile.docx", FileMode.Create))
    {
       stream.WriteTo(fs);
    }
}