Building templates

Aspose.Words Product Family
1

that would be fantastic in our application. We allow our end user to build their own template. The end users dont always understand how to build the template. Even if it is important for them to customize the report template, they are not developpers.

I searched over internet and found one of your competitor does the job : https://www.docentric.com/documentation/templating/basic-concepts

Do you know if you will ever develop such a feature ?

thanks

2

@miniseb31,

Please provide complete details of your usecase. What feature exactly do you want to see in Aspose.Words API? We will then be in better position to address your concerns accordingly.

3

my main problem is to document the template tags (the object i am binding to the template). what i imagine in the word add in is:

  • see all properties of my data source, clicking on the property would create the appropriate aspose tag
  • if there is a list of object, clicking on the list would create a foreach tag. additional feature for list can be imagined : define sort, filter option (that would generate the appropriate linq where code in the template)
  • if i am in a paragraph somewhere in my document template, the word addin would propose me the current object with all properties that i can insert. When building a template it is difficult, especially for a non developer to know which property can be accessible to insert the appropriate tag. in our datasource, we have different level of list : an object contains a list of ClassA which contains a list of ClassB. so in the template we have a foreach in a foreach. in the first foreach, only classA properties are accessible. If you have a complex datasource with a lot of properties, the template creation is time consuming.
  • in the word addin, have the possibility to add a template sample (directly a preformated template, for example a table containing a list of customers)

the word add in api proposes all functions to manipulate the current word document. the word addin i imagine is simply a tool to create an aspose linq report with the right aspose tag. When the template is created, it can be used in our application to generate the report (just like now).

The word addin does not require modification in the aspose.words .net api, this is a tool to help us create an Aspose linq report template.

what do you think ?

4

@minisebdev,

Thanks for the additional information. We have logged your requirement in our issue tracking system. Your ticket number is WORDSNET-17417. We will keep you posted on further updates and let you know when WORDSNET-17417 is implemented.

5

Hello
do you think you will implement it end of 2018 or it is for later ?

6

@miniseb31,

This issue is currently pending for analysis and is in the queue. There are no estimates available at the moment. Once the analysis of this issue is completed, we may then be able to calculate and share the ETA with you. We apologize for any inconvenience.

7

Hello,
So after 6 years, we ended up to build our ms word plugin that list all possible tags and insert tag in ms word document with aspose syntax.

This home made plugin is very useful for us : it allows to describe all possilbe tags for our application, insert tag with aspose syntax (based on the type of the tag we insert image, text, doc, dictionnary), all tag inserted are colored.
We extensively use this plugin in our side, and release it to our end user.
We can’t imagine working with aspose without our home made plugin.

But our plugin still lacks some functionnalities that are common in development IDE, and we still face difficulties in some area, such as :

  • no syntax highlight in word
  • no intellisense
  • no easy way to ensure that we close all “if” and “foreach” after we open them
  • no easy way to see if the report template has errors (unless we generate a report)

MS Word is not an IDE, and it would be very time consuming for us to develop above feature directly in our home made plugin.

Maybe we could use visual studio code or notepad++ and create a user defined language with aspose syntax. Then copy paste source code back to ms word (with some copy paste problem for ms word table).

Do you have ETA for WORDSNET-17417 ?

8

@miniseb31

Unfortunately, this feature is in its initial state of development and there is no ETA at the moment.