Purpose

This module supports a few operations for inspecting or modifying contents in Microsoft Word documents in '.docx' format -- therefore the name 'surgeon'. Since a surgeon does not give life, there is no support for creating fresh documents; if you have such needs, use one of the other packages listed in the "SEE ALSO" section -- or use the companion module MsOffice::Word::Template.

Some applications for this module are :

• content extraction in plain text format;
• unlinking fields (equivalent of performing Ctrl-Shift-F9 on the whole document)
• adding markers at bookmark start and end positions
• regex replacements within text, for example for :

• insertion of generated images (for example barcodes) -- see "images" in MsOffice::Word::Surgeon::PackagePart;
• pretty-printing the internal XML structure.

The ".docx" format

The format of Microsoft ".docx" documents is described in <http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm> and <http://officeopenxml.com/>. An excellent introduction can be found at <https://www.toptal.com/xml/an-informal-introduction-to-docx>. Another precious source of documentation is <http://officeopenxml.com/WPcontentOverview.php>. Internally, a document is a zipped archive, where the member named "word/document.xml" stores the main document contents, in XML format.

Operating mode

The present module does not parse all details of the whole XML structure because it only focuses on text nodes (those that contain literal text) and run nodes (those that contain text formatting properties). All remaining XML information, for example for representing sections, paragraphs, tables, etc., is stored as opaque XML fragments; these fragments are re-inserted at proper places when reassembling the whole document after having modified some text nodes.

Constructor

new

  my $surgeon = MsOffice::Word::Surgeon->new(docx => $filename_or_filehandle);
  # or simply : ->new($filename);

Builds a new surgeon instance, initialized with the contents of the given filename or filehandle.

Accessors

docx

Path to the ".docx" file

zip

Instance of Archive::Zip associated with this file

parts

Hashref to MsOffice::Word::Surgeon::PackagePart objects, keyed by their part name in the ZIP file. There is always a 'document' part. Other parts may be headers, footers, footnotes or endnotes.

document

Shortcut to "$surgeon->part('document')" -- the MsOffice::Word::Surgeon::PackagePart object corresponding to the main document. See the "PackagePart" documentation for operations on part objects. Besides, the following operations are supported directly as methods to the $surgeon object and are automatically delegated to the "document" part : "contents", "original_contents", "indented_contents", "plain_text", "replace".

headers

  my @header_parts = $surgeon->headers;

Returns the ordered list of names of header members stored in the ZIP file.

footers

  my @footer_parts = $surgeon->footers;

Returns the ordered list of names of footer members stored in the ZIP file.

Other methods

part

  my $part = $surgeon->part($part_name);

Returns the MsOffice::Word::Surgeon::PackagePart object corresponding to the given part name.

all_parts_do

  my $result = $surgeon->all_parts_do($method_name => %args);

Calls the given method on all part objects. Results are accumulated in a hash, with part names as keys to the results. This is mostly used to invoke the "replace" in MsOffice::Word::Surgeon::PackagePart method, i.e.

  $surgeon->all_parts_do(replace => qr[$pattern], $replacement_callback, %replacement_args);

xml_member

  my $xml = $surgeon->xml_member($member_name); # reading
  # or
  $surgeon->xml_member($member_name, $new_xml); # writing

Reads or writes the given member name in the ZIP file, with utf8 decoding or encoding.

save_as

  $surgeon->save_as($docx_file_or_filehandle);

Writes the ZIP archive into the given file or filehandle.

overwrite

  $surgeon->overwrite;

Writes the updated ZIP archive into the initial file. If the initial "docx" was given as a filehandle, use the "save_as" method instead.

new_revision

  my $xml = $surgeon->new_revision(
    to_delete   => $text_to_delete,
    to_insert   => $text_to_insert,
    author      => $author_string,
    date        => $date_string,
    run         => $run_object,
    xml_before  => $xml_string,
  );

This method is syntactic sugar for instantiating the MsOffice::Word::Surgeon::Revision class and returning XML markup for MsWord revisions (a.k.a. "tracked changes") generated by that class. Users can then manually review those revisions within MsWord and accept or reject them. This is best used in collaboration with the "replace" method : the replacement callback can call "$self->new_revision(...)" to generate revision marks in the document.

Either "to_delete" or "to_insert" (or both) must be present. Other parameters are optional. The parameters are :

to_delete

The string of text to delete (usually this will be the "matched" argument passed to the replacement callback).

to_insert

The string of new text to insert.

author

A short string that will be displayed by MsWord as the "author" of this revision.

date

A date (and optional time) in ISO format that will be displayed by MsWord as the date of this revision. The current date and time will be used by default.

run

A reference to the MsOffice::Word::Surgeon::Run object surrounding this revision. The formatting properties of that run will be copied into the "<w:r>" nodes of the deleted and inserted text fragments.

xml_before

An optional XML fragment to be inserted before the "<w:t>" node of the inserted text

Operations on parts

See the MsOffice::Word::Surgeon::PackagePart documentation for other operations on package parts, including operations on fields, bookmarks or images.