Knowledgebase

If you want to bind content controls in a Microsoft Word document to data, you might want to use a CustomXmlPart. This is a XML document that binds content controls to xml tag names.

The xml produced will look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Root>
  <Employee_EmployeeCity></Employee_EmployeeCity>
  <Employee_CompetitionAttachment></Employee_CompetitionAttachment>
  <Employee_FirstName></Employee_FirstName>
  <Employee_FormattedName></Employee_FormattedName>
  <Employee_HandinDate></Employee_HandinDate>
  <Employee_HouseNumber></Employee_HouseNumber>
  <Employee_HouseSuffix></Employee_HouseSuffix>
  <Employee_PostalCode></Employee_PostalCode>
  <Employee_RelationAttachment></Employee_RelationAttachment>
  <Employee_Salutation></Employee_Salutation>
  <Employee_Street></Employee_Street>
  <Enlistment_CompetitionClause></Enlistment_CompetitionClause>
  <Enlistment_EmployeeFirstDay></Enlistment_EmployeeFirstDay>
  <Enlistment_RelationshipClause></Enlistment_RelationshipClause>
  <Enlistment_TraineeTravel></Enlistment_TraineeTravel>
  <Function_CurrentDate></Function_CurrentDate>
  <Function_GetManager></Function_GetManager>
  <ServiceRequest_Id></ServiceRequest_Id>
</Root>

To produce that XML document based on all content control names in a Microsoft Word document, you can use the following code:

namespace EndToEndTest
{
    using DocumentFormat.OpenXml;
    using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Packaging;
    using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Wordprocessing;
    using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
    using System;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using System.IO;
    using System.Linq;
    using System.Xml.Linq;
    

    [TestClass]
    public class RliResearch
    {
        [TestMethod]
        public void Test_with_duration()
        {
            var watch = new System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch();
            watch.Start();

            string sourcePath = @"C:\Temp\Test.docx";
            string destinationPath = string.Format(@"C:\Temp\{0}_Test.xml", Guid.NewGuid());
            Create_XML_file_for_CustomXmlPart(sourcePath, destinationPath);

            watch.Stop();
            System.Console.WriteLine(watch.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds);
        }

        public void Create_XML_file_for_CustomXmlPart(string sourcePath, string destinationPath)
        {
            var names = new List<string>();
            using (Stream content = GetFileContent(sourcePath))
            {
                names = GetUniqueContentControlNames(content);
            }

            XDocument document = CreateXmlDocument("Root", names);

            document.Save(destinationPath);
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets the contents of the file as a stream, don't forget to use this function in a "using" statement.
        /// </summary>
        public Stream GetFileContent(string path)
        {
            byte[] contentBytes = File.ReadAllBytes(path);
            var stream = new MemoryStream(contentBytes);
            return stream;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Create a XDocument, with a root element based on the given "rootName", containing child elements based on the given "tagnames".
        /// </summary>
        public XDocument CreateXmlDocument(string rootName, List<string> tagNames)
        {
            var document = new XDocument(
                new XDeclaration("1.0", "utf-8", null),
                    new XElement(rootName,
                        tagNames.Select(x => new XElement(x, string.Empty)
                    )
                )
            );

            return document;
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// Gets all unique content control names in the given document.
        /// </summary>
        public List<string> GetUniqueContentControlNames(Stream content)
        {
            var names = new List<string>();
            using (WordprocessingDocument doc =
            WordprocessingDocument.Open(content, false))
            {
                foreach (var cc in doc.ContentControls())
                {
                    SdtProperties props = cc.Elements<SdtProperties>().FirstOrDefault();
                    Tag tag = props.Elements<Tag>().FirstOrDefault();
                    if (tag != null)
                    {
                        names.Add(tag.Val);
                    }
                    
                }
            }

            // Makes names unique and order by name.
            var uniqueNames = names.Distinct(StringComparer.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase).OrderBy(x => x).ToList();
            return uniqueNames;
        }
    }


   
    /// <summary>
    /// Code from: http://openxmldeveloper.org/blog/b/openxmldeveloper/archive/2011/04/11/137383.aspx
    /// </summary>
    public static class ContentControlExtensions
    {
        public static IEnumerable<OpenXmlElement> ContentControls(
            this OpenXmlPart part)
        {
            return part.RootElement
                .Descendants()
                .Where(e => e is SdtBlock || e is SdtRun);
        }

        public static IEnumerable<OpenXmlElement> ContentControls(
            this WordprocessingDocument doc)
        {
            foreach (var cc in doc.MainDocumentPart.ContentControls())
                yield return cc;
            foreach (var header in doc.MainDocumentPart.HeaderParts)
                foreach (var cc in header.ContentControls())
                    yield return cc;
            foreach (var footer in doc.MainDocumentPart.FooterParts)
                foreach (var cc in footer.ContentControls())
                    yield return cc;
            if (doc.MainDocumentPart.FootnotesPart != null)
                foreach (var cc in doc.MainDocumentPart.FootnotesPart.ContentControls())
                    yield return cc;
            if (doc.MainDocumentPart.EndnotesPart != null)
                foreach (var cc in doc.MainDocumentPart.EndnotesPart.ContentControls())
                    yield return cc;
        }
    }
}