Posted on 2009-02-12 08:29:49-08 by benat

Hello,

I'm trying to join several ODT files (one page each) into a single document containing all of them, one per page. After spending some time on the documentation I ended with the following code, which at a first glance does what I need: 

$oodoc1->appendElement(
    '//office:body',
    0,
    $oodoc2->exportXMLElement( '//office:text' )
);

This code exports the <office:text> node from $oodoc2 and appends it, as a new child, into node <office:body> of $oodoc1. This way, the generated document gets two <office:text> nodes.

Well, it works and I can open the merged document (~60 files joined) in an OpenOffice application, but the point is that I'm not sure it conforms to the ODF schema: shouldn't the node be unique? Moreover, I would need the whole document be somewhat "reorganized" (styles and alike), but the "reorganize" method throws an error message saying it's no longer implemented.

Please does anybody know a cleaner way to do such document joins? Google didn't help. Thanks a lot.

Posted on 2009-02-12 12:31:47-08 by jmgdoc in response to 9938

1) The office:text element should appear once in a regular document

2) OpenOffice::OODoc allows the programmer to create complex documents including parts possibly extracted/copied from other documents, but it's not designed to directly merge documents.

3) However the API allows you to easily create a master document and include external subdocuments through sections; see the appendSection() method in the OpenOffice::OODoc::Text manual chapter; the result is not exactly a merged document, i.e. the external documents remain hosted in external files, but the functionality is similar.

Posted on 2009-02-12 13:17:38-08 by benat in response to 9944

Many thanks. I will try the way you suggest and post back the result when (if?) I'm successful :-)

(This article is based on a thread on the CPAN::Forum.)