topic Re: Merging documents from repository in Alfresco Archive

Merging documents from repository

lordzoster — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 22:41:26 GMT

Hallo I have a repository based on Alfresco 4.2e containing various docx.I'd need to retrieve some of them (according to their tags) and combine them in a single docx.Could you point me in any direction?Thanks in advance

Re: Merging documents from repository

sasquatch58 — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 04:10:45 GMT

Sounds like an option to script this from LibreOffice or Word (depending on your environment/ preferences) using CMIS calls to access Alfresco.
- look for an open the first document
- from this document open and insert/ append the contents of the second document.
- save under a new name and close.

Cheers, Sasquatch

Re: Merging documents from repository

scouil — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 12:04:22 GMT

Hi,

As Sasquatch stated, there is no magic out-of-the-box function that would do that.
What you need to do is find a java library that does this, add that lib to alfresco and then call it in your custom java code. You might start looking there. Never tried any though:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2494549/is-there-any-java-library-maybe-poi-which-allows-to-merge-docx-files

But technically it is possible. We did implement a custom action for a client that would convert all the selected documents into pdfs and then merge all the pdf (alfresco already include the libs and APIs for those 2)
Then we have a pdf that is a merged version of the docs that is available to download.
It might as well be something you want to consider if it fits your requirements.

Re: Merging documents from repository

lordzoster — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 14:31:34 GMT

Thank you.
I was actually considering docx4j.

Re: Merging documents from repository

scouil — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 09:07:04 GMT

If you already have the library then appending the documents is just plain java.
What part of the process are you stuck with?

Re: Merging documents from repository

lordzoster — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 11:37:53 GMT

Good question.
I'm stuck with several steps of the process:
- very basic knowledge of Java (just syntax and some principles) - I'm a C# and PHP developer
- no idea of which method to use to programmatically tag and retrieve documents, REST, CMIS, or other, since in every case the documentation I find starts from the far roots of the knowledge and I'm having an hard time in synthesizing valuable informations.

Re: Merging documents from repository

christopheradam — Thu, 03 Apr 2014 06:15:03 GMT

I am a vb developer, and I do have the related methods and codes for <a href="http://www.rasteredge.com/how-to/vb-net-imaging/word-merge-split/">Word merging</a>, including Word document in 2007 and any later version. I see you are C# developer， you can search and use a code converter to convert my vb codes into c#.

Private Sub Combine(source As List(Of BaseDocument), destn As Stream) Implements DOCXDocument.Combine
End Sub
Private Sub Combine(source As List(Of BaseDocument), destn As [String]) Implements DOCXDocument.Combine
End Sub
Private Sub Combine(source As List(Of [String]), destn As Stream) Implements DOCXDocument.Combine
End Sub
Private Sub Combine(source As List(Of [String]), destn As Sting) Implements DOCXDocument.Combine
End Sub