I need very simple text file logging. I'll only append lines to it. never change existing ones nor delete them. If it would be XML file it would be easier to bind to grids to view them. but question remains for both text files and xml files as they are in file system.
in web server there will be file locking while appending log entries. and maybe also while reading them. So this method has to be thread safe. At the same moment multiple instances can write date to file.
I know there are some third party tools like serilog etc but I want to know:
how can I append (not change) lines to text file (or xml file) without concerning about file locks ?
if I read xml file to dataset, add a new row to it and save it as xml I would use other entries made by other instances.
if I open a text file with streamwriter and append a line to it, other instances would get lock error.
I get the list of logs from admin panel again, file will be locked and instances wouldn't append logs.
any ideas ?
After long reserch hours and experiments I found out that using Nlog is the best option for me. most important thing is people who use it are very happy. I created small example page that writes a log everytime it called and tested it. I have a multithreaded application that calls this sample page again and again. If was fast enough so I could not see the counting numbers of threads. no problem raised so far.
So, I'll stick to Nlog.
best.
What would be the best approach to replace placeholders in a .docx document (Word 2010) with data coming from a MySQL database?
Can I just open the file using a server side language and do a string replace per each placeholder?
Is there any existing tool/library available?
Thanks
Disclosure: I work for Invantive.
Using Invantive Composition (http://www.invantive.com/products/invantive-composition) you can fill Word documents (letters, legal pleadings, insurancy policies) with data from a database (IBM DB2, Oracle, MySQL, Teradata and SQL Server) and then fully change the contents at will manually. It is intended for real Microsoft Word end-users (both the guys that make the template and the ones that use it) that access the databases through a central webservice and models with queries. Invantive Composition allows nested repeating groups of data and lay-out. Integrates into Microsoft Word using click once.
In the past, I personally have also been using JasperReports (http://community.jaspersoft.com/project/jasperreports-library) to generate letters using the RTF output target of JasperReports. It is free and works fine as long as you do not want to edit the output more than a few words and have Java/SQL development skills. Just as Invantive Composition it works fine for large numbers of different reports.
As long as you can control the environment completely, you can also consider using RTF as intermediate language (not for end-users, only real developers). Save document as RTF, replace parts of the text you need to be replacable, write a webservice that accepts the parameter and dumps back the resulting RTF. Takes some time to generate more complex tables (tables are obviously something invented by the human race after the RTF specification was written :-) This approach only works with very limited number of templates and when you have sufficient developer time available to get it up and running and stabilized.
As an independent reviewer, I have also seen cases where XML templates were used, but the results were not as good as with JasperReports.
**Disclosure: I lead the docx4j project **
There are heaps of existing tools/libraries available!
Yes, you can just do a string replace, but that is a brittle approach, since Word may have split the string across runs.
You can use MERGEFIELDs, or content control data binding.
docx4j supports all three approaches, but content control data binding is the most powerful.
ContentControlsMergeXML
MERGEFIELDs
VariableReplace
One thing to consider especially is "repeats". If you want say a row of a table in Word, for each matching row in your MySQL table, then you need a way to make this happen.
docx4j does this with a "repeat" content control around the table row; whichever solution you choose, I'd make sure up front that it can handle repeats.
If you want to use PHP the most complete available solution is PHPDocX.
You may check in the tutorial how to substitute placeholder variables by data coming from any data source (like a MySQL DB).
In particular, you may populate table rows with an indefinite number of entries and you may delete whole blocks of the Word document depending on the data fed to the application or build dynamical Word charts.
You may check the available DEMO for a simple but quite illustrative example (its inner workings are explained in the tutorial section).
You can use open Open XML SDK and replace your placeholders like this.
Disclosure: I lead the docxgenjs project
I think you shouldn't have to code everything by yourself, that's why I created a Mustache-like templating engine for docx
Demo:
http://javascript-ninja.fr/docxgenjs/examples/demo.html
Repo
https://github.com/edi9999/docxgenjs
It is JS-based and works client and server side.
Yes, you can use server side language to do it.
Check on apache POI.
http://poi.apache.org
Hello I read the above esp the comments and Ivantive looks impressive - but the solution I needed was much simpler. Use Selection.Range.InsertDatabase in Word to fetch records from an access database or excel spreadsheet or even just another word document. With the access solution you can choose the layout of the records to fetch and have it fetch just particular recordds based on a field (eg ID). Google the words above and it'll take you to MS guidance and an example VB script. Worked well in just a few mins. Now looking for VB script that asks the person what ID they want from the dbase and we're done.
it uses docx templates that have merge fields with java objects (the objects have the information you load from mysql or any other source). The xdoc report is an project for java language, the home page of the project is https://code.google.com/p/xdocreport/.
*Disclosure: I create the templ4docx project *
Hello
You can use templ4docx java library, which is on maven central repository, so you can just add it to your maven dependencies:
<dependency>
<groupId>pl.jsolve</groupId>
<artifactId>templ4docx</artifactId>
<version>2.0.0</version>
</dependency>
Example usage:
Docx docx = new Docx("E:\\template.docx");
Variables variables = new Variables();
variables.addTextVariable(new TextVariable("${firstName}", "John"));
variables.addTextVariable(new TextVariable("${lastName}", "Sky"));
docx.fillTemplate(variables);
docx.save("E:\\filledTemplate.docx");
More details you can find here: http://jsolve.github.io/java/templ4docx/
I have stored page contents (tables, plain text, images and paragraphs) into a variable. Now i want to convert this variable contents into MS word. How i can do this. Is there any possibility available in VS2010? OR is there any free library available for this conversion?
If you already have everything stored somewhere.. you can do something like Building a Word Document Using SQL Server Data
Moreover, there is a good example about Microsoft Word Documents from ASP.NET
How to do a mail merge in asp.net without installing word on the server?
any dlls or any components available?
Edits
The template document is already available. im not trying to create a word document. Just want to link the word document with the data.
Thanks
Personally, I would just look at using the System.Net.Mail class and its templating abilities. There is a nice library here: https://github.com/lukencode/FluentEmail which you can pass templates into and send emails that way with the data you require inserted into it.
EDIT: noticed you didn't actually specify whether it was print mailmerge or email, apologies if it is a print mailmerge you are trying to create, but for mass emailing with customized data in it, templating is definitely the way to go.
To accomplish the Word doc creation part of the question there is a previous thread about this: How can a Word document be created in C#?
To send the completed doc check out the System.Net.Mail namespace: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.mail.aspx or if you can afford it I have had great experience with http://www.aspnetemail.com/.
We use Aspose.Words to perform mail merges from .net code. It's not cheap but once you get to grips with it it's very powerful.
Edit: I'm assuming you are looking to merge data from some sort of data store into a template word document which can be printed and distributed.
Another option is Docentric Toolkit. It is pure .NET and based on OpenXML without any dependency on MS Word, so it is a good fit for server side report generation.
Merging with data is done through placeholders, which get filled up with data at run time. Data can come from database or XML.
Templates are created in MS Word which needs Docentric Toolkit add-in installed (license is needed).
It is really easy to create templates and to merge them with data from .NET code.
I have requirement where I need to allow users to upload a Word document with place holders for certain fields which can be found in the database. This will be their template. For example the place holders might be prepended with ## or something. For example
Dear ##Title ##Lastname
They then can grab a record and hit export to Word document. This will then let them choose the template. They can select the template and then click continue. I will then get the template and replace the ##Title with the title field in the database for the selected record. I am not sure where to start or what components I need to do this.
From my initial investigation it seems that I can do this with the new open XML standard for Office 2007. So perhaps I should read in the template and save all the contents to a db table somewhere. Then when the use wants to export I get the contents again and then do a search and replace for the ## placeholders and link them properly. Then save the document to the output stream again which will then bring up the save dialog on their browser.
I am using ASP.Net MVC and am in a hosted environment. I was also maybe contemplating dynamically creating a new View type and dynamically creating new views when the user uploads a template. Not sure that this approach will work though.
Is this a good approach?
What tools should I be looking at?
Any other suggestions?
This is similar to an approach we took for inserting data into word documents and then returning them to the user. We opened the .docx file (it's a zip file so easy to extract) extracted the document (in the word folder called document.xml), did the replace and then put the document back into the .docx file and returned it to the user.
An issue we hit were that word inserted tags at strange places, especially things like spell/grammar errors, so we needed to be careful when we did the search/replace.
We decided not to store the fields from the document in a database to allow the documents to be easily updated.
We used dotnetzip component for opening the .docx files
Something we also did was to combine several documents into a single large document to save on the number of downloads. If I remember we used the open xml toolkit to do this merging. The website has also got loads of other information that may be of use.
Check out Scott Guthries blog post about the new view engine code named "Razor" coming out real shortly from Microsoft. In the comments there is talk about it being able to be used in mail merge scenarios like you talk about with ASP.NET MVC views.