topic Re: Metadata in word in Alfresco Archive

Metadata in word

cfrancisco — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:50:17 GMT

Hi, I want to create a new word document in Alfresco.When I create it, I ask the user to put some metadata to assign the document.What I want to do, is to put some of that metadata in the document using word fieldsAnyone can help me to do this?Is there an easy way?Thank in advance cfrancisco

Re: Metadata in word

pmonks — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 06:54:00 GMT

So kind of like the reverse of a metadata extractor (http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Metadata_Extraction)? I guess it'd be called a "metadata injector". :wink:

Out of the box Alfresco doesn't provide facilities for injecting metadata into a file, although implementing that as an extension probably wouldn't be too much effort - it could be implemented as a custom action for example. I suspect the biggest challenge would be the raw file format handling logic, and for that I'd look for an established library to do it for me - perhaps the OpenOffice API (http://api.openoffice.org/) or Apache POI HWPF (http://poi.apache.org/hwpf/) (although HWPF appears to be in a holding pattern at the moment).

Re: Metadata in word

loftux — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 08:28:20 GMT

There is a forge project
http://forge.alfresco.com/projects/embedders/

I'm not sure if it can put metadata into the ms word properties or the status of the project.
If so, thats is only the first step.
Next you would have to link your properties to word fields, there is a built in function for that. Problem is that it may not be updated automatically. Either there is an option in word for that (cannot remember, long time since using ms word now) or you will have to write some code to take care of that.

/Peter LÃƒÂ¶fgren