Topic: Best practice for generating multiple documents

Posted by bkidd · 26-06-2020 - 13:54

I would like to give users a way to populate a template using a CSV/Excel file. I realize I could ask them to create a block that starts at the beginning of the body and ends at the end of the body. I would ideally not require that they add the block if it is understood the entire document should be cloned.

In searching the documentation for bulk processing, I found replaceList (which looks promising), replaceWordFragment, and cloneWordContent. I am trying to determine the simplest way to do this. I would like a single document at the end that has the content cloned and replaced based on the number of rows. I'd like to ensure each cloned content has a page break between them.

Any suggestions on how I can accomplish this? I'm handling the improting of the CSV/Excel as well as the column to placeholder mapping so I have all the data and just need to understand the best way to clone an entire document - I think MS Word mail merge works this way.

Thanks

Posted by admin · 26-06-2020 - 18:56

Hello,

You can use the template methods to work with a template DOCX and generate more than one output from an external content loading the same template for each output:

// iterate a data source to generate the documents
for ... {
  $docx = new CreateDocxFromTemplate('template.docx');
  // use template API methods to replace contents
  (...)
  // save the DOCX
  $docx->createDocx($output);
}

as explained on:

https://www.phpdocx.com/documentation/practical/working-with-templates

https://www.phpdocx.com/documentation/practical/adding-content-to-a-template

Or use Bulk Processing (https://www.phpdocx.com/documentation/introduction/bulk-processing-documents-PHP) features available since phpdocx 10 in Premium licenses.

If you need to clone a whole DOCX you can use mergeDocx merging the same document as many times as needed: https://www.phpdocx.com/api-documentation/docxutilities/merge-Word-documents-with-PHP . This method includes an option to force a section page break (enforceSectionPageBreak), or you can add a page break using DOCXPath if needed with insertWordFragment (https://www.phpdocx.com/api-documentation/docx-path/insert-elements-in-docx).

Regards.

Posted by bkidd · 30-06-2020 - 20:04

Thanks, the bulk processing works great.

Forum