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Advanced Document Templating: How To Configure The 'DOCX From Dynamic Template' Smart Service

The plugin provides a Smart Service to generate docx documents from a docx template populated with dynamic data from an XML file. The plugin uses the XDocReport library and allows defining placeholders in the template to be filled from the XML. It can also insert images if provided. The service returns a success status, error message if any, and the generated docx document.

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Zeno 2k
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358 views3 pages

Advanced Document Templating: How To Configure The 'DOCX From Dynamic Template' Smart Service

The plugin provides a Smart Service to generate docx documents from a docx template populated with dynamic data from an XML file. The plugin uses the XDocReport library and allows defining placeholders in the template to be filled from the XML. It can also insert images if provided. The service returns a success status, error message if any, and the generated docx document.

Uploaded by

Zeno 2k
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Advanced Document Templating

The plugin provides a Smart Service to create docx documents defining the dynamic structure within a docx template. The plugin is
based on the library "XDocReport" https://code.google.com/p/xdocreport/ .

How to Configure the 'DOCX From Dynamic Template' Smart service


Data Input Tab

Input Data Required Multiple Description


Type
Docx Template Document Yes No Docx Document that is definining the structure of the document to be
generated.
Xml Data Any Type Yes N/A Xml String containing all the values that will be placed into the docx
Model documen. Please follow 'How to use it' section to define it correctly.
Images Any Type No N/A Dynamic CDT containing images that will be placed into the generated docx
document. Please follow 'How to use it' section to define it correctly.
Create New Boolean Yes No Whether to create a new document, or update an existing one.
Document
New Document Text No No If creating a new document, use this as the name.
Name
New Document Text No No If creating a new document, use this as the description.
Desc
Save In Folder Folder No No If creating a new document, save into this folder.
Existing Document No No If not creating a new document, overwrite this one.
Document
Data Output Tab

Output Data Multiple Description


Type
Success Boolean No Returns false if an error has occurred. Save this value to a process variable to enable
exception processing on the subsequent activity in the process flow.
Error Message Text No Lists the text of the error message if one occurred.
New Document Document No A created DOCX Document
Created

How To use the 'DOCX From Dynamic Template' Smart service


Defining a docx Template

How to design a report: https://code.google.com/p/xdocreport/wiki/DocxDesignReport#Create_with_MS_Word .

Defining 'XML Data Model' data input

The expected Xml String passed into DynamicCdtDataModel Data Input must follow these principles:

1. The XML String has only one main element (in the example is "project") which is the root of all the mapped values
2. Within the root element there can be simple elements or multiple elements:
o Simple elements (in the example is "name") are simple placeholders in the DOCX template. Their name is the same as
the placeholder name in the DOCX template
o Multiple elements (in the example is "developer") are placeholders that are mapped in the DOCX template with
dynamic structures (such as grids). Their name is the same as the placeholder name in the DOCX template and its field
attributes have the same name as the sub placeholders in the dynamic structure (for instances, if the multiple elements
is mapping a grid, the fields of the multiple elements will have the same name of the column placeholders of the grid).
Multiple elements must be of type type!CDT from the data management tab. For instance, the value of a multiple
element can be the output of a query rule/query entity.

To test the plugin with the docx template provided as example you can use the following example of 'Xml Data Model' definition:
="<project>
<name>This is a simple placeholder</name>
<developer name='John' lastEmail='Smith' mail='smith@email' day='10-10-2014' />
<developer name='Frank' lastEmail='Brown' mail='frank@email' day='10-10-2014' />
</project>"

Defining 'Images' data input

This custom Smart Services allows you to place images (and dynamic arrays of them) into the docx document. This input parameters
expects a dynamic CDT as input where all the attributes are named as the name of the placeholders and contain an Appian uploaded
image document (or an array of them) as value. To test the plugin with the docx template provided as example you can set the input of
this parameter as follow:

={logo:cons!ADT_IMAGE}

The costant "ADT_IMAGE" should be of type document (multiple) and contain more than one image.

Troubleshooting
Here below a list of possible errors during the execution of the plugin which can be challenging to troubleshoot:

"The entity name must immediately follow the '&' in the entity reference."

The data input "Xml Data Model" of the Smart Service is expected to be an XML string of all the data that will be placed into the
generated DOCX document. Since it's an XML string, it's not expecting to find the char "&" (or other XML protected chars like “<” or
“>”) within the value of an xml tag. In this case the solution should be using the fn!toHtml every time a value from a pv! (or ri!) is
placed in the text string that is the XML. This will substitute the special chars with the HTML code of them (avoiding them to break
the XML syntax otherwise) but will still show correctly in the generated DOCX. For instance, if the content of a pv! (or ri!) is “&<>”
this will happen:

fn!toHtml("&<>")  &amp;&lt;&gt;

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