Replace a row in a table with a dynamic collection

[kalmanh]

Would be nice if there was some support for adding multiple (dynamic amount) values instead of one.

So, for example, if I am using a template that lists the number of people a person has - it would be nice if I can specify a variable for a row, and docx_templater would be somehow smart enough to dynamically add more rows per each child.

[mmmries]

@kalmanh thanks for the suggestion. We have considered this kind of use case before and it is right on the border of what I think this gem is meant to be used for. The main use case for this gem is that you can let a business person be in charge of generating/modifying the template and the code can be just smart enough to plug in some data.

I think that if you want to affect the structure of a document you might want to look for a library that builds up the structure as it goes, rather than attempting to replace structure in an existing document. Perhaps something like https://github.com/docxtor/docxtor might fit that need better.

For replacing multiple values we could work it into the gem, but it seems like there is a natural progression of wanting to repeat multiple chunks in a document and then wanting to replace placeholders inside of those chunks etc. So if your application is planning on having a programmer be in charge of the details of generating the docx then I would suggest you use a more full-featured library, but in our use case we have over 100 templates and they get updated on a regular basis so we went with a simpler replacement strategy and let the business people manage the templates.

I'm curious to know what you think about that difference and where you would draw the line between a simpler replacement library and a more full-featured document structuring library?

[kalmanh]

I think what you are saying makes a lot of sense and I am thinking too much like a programmer. ;)

Still though, I imagine there will sometimes be a use case to replace a collection of values instead of a single value.

[mmmries]

I definitely agree that this is a feature that is right on the border of the scope of this gem. There should be an easy case for replacing multiple values, I just haven't been able to nail down a good example. If you have a concrete example of taking Collection A and document B and an expected resulting document C I would love to see it.

Once we have a good example of what we want to build I will go full-force to make it possible, I just don't want to start building the feature until I know what the feature is.

[serra-allgood]

@hqmq - Would you consider bullet or numbered lists to be within the gem's scope? If yes, the document could have a field that defines the start of the list such as:

• ||collection||

And if an array of strings such as ["foo", "bar", "baz"] is passed as the content for :collection, the result would be:

• foo
• bar
• baz

Just a thought, still a lifesaver of a gem without it!

[mmmries]

@CorwinKelly I would like to add this.

I think if we add it we need to cover a couple of the common cases:

• Bullet Lists
• Paragraphs
• table rows

I'm not sure how we would organize support for that. There are a few options:

• at the time of replacement try to figure out where we are in the document (ie. am I part of a bulleted list or part of a table row?)
• Some meta data in the replacement tag? (ie ||collection:bulleted||)

I'm totally open for suggestions or Pull Requests on this topic.

If @paulcsmith is okay with it maybe I'll open up a Pull Request with a rough draft and see how it looks?

[paulcsmith]

@CorwinKelly @hqmq I'm totally ok with adding something like that, but I could see a lot of weird edge cases popping up. Styling being the first that comes to mind. Right now we replace things and keep the styling, but I'm not sure how we would do that with a collection of elements.

I bet it's possible, but it'll be tricky. If you want to start on something though, I think it would be great! I like the idea of specifying the type as @hqmq mentioned in his second bullet point. It would be cool to figure it out automatically, but that could introduce a whole new set of conditions we have to test for.

[serra-allgood]

I unfortunately can't commit to it right now, but I'm glad the idea sparked some interest and I'll contribute when I can. I'll have to get more familiar with the Office Open XML format. I also like the metadata idea that @hqmq mentioned.