Read content of repeating sections with apache POI - ms-word

Question

I Have a word document with a repeating section, containing other content controls.
In java project, I have a function that gets all sdts (content controls) from a word document in apache POI, in a List List.
When I inspect my repeating section in that list, I can get the text inside all content controls (inside my repeating section) but is apears as a long paragraph instead of other sdt nodes.
Is there a way to inspect content of repeating section sdt with Apache POI ? I can't find anything about it in the doc
function that gets all sdts
private static List
extractSDTsFromBodyElements(List<IBodyElement> elements) {
List<AbstractXWPFSDT> sdts = new ArrayList<AbstractXWPFSDT>();
for (IBodyElement e : elements) {
if (e instanceof XWPFSDT) {
XWPFSDT sdt = (XWPFSDT) e;
sdts.add(sdt);
} else if (e instanceof XWPFParagraph) {
XWPFParagraph p = (XWPFParagraph) e;
for (IRunElement e2 : p.getIRuns()) {
if (e2 instanceof XWPFSDT) {
XWPFSDT sdt = (XWPFSDT) e2;
sdts.add(sdt);
}
}
}
}
return sdts;
}

Answer 1

The XWPF part of apache poi is rudimentary until now and highly in development. In XWPFSDT is this mentioned also: "Experimental class to offer rudimentary read-only processing of of StructuredDocumentTags/ContentControl". So until now your code only gets the surrounding XWPFSDT of the repeating content control but not the inner controls. One could have seen that by having some debugging outputs in the code. See my System.out.println(...).
So to really get all XWPFSDTs we must go other ways using the underlaying XMLdirectly.
Lets have a complete example.
Look at this Worddocument:
As you see there is a single control to input the group name, then a repeating content control around three controls to input name, amount and date and then a single control to input the employee. All controls which shall be read have titles set. So whether the title is set, is the criterion whether a control is important for reading or not.
The following code now can read all controls and their content:
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import org.apache.poi.xwpf.usermodel.*;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import org.openxmlformats.schemas.wordprocessingml.x2006.main.*;
import org.apache.xmlbeans.XmlCursor;
import javax.xml.namespace.QName;
public class ReadWordForm {
/*
private static List<AbstractXWPFSDT> extractSDTsFromBodyElements(List<IBodyElement> elements) {
List<AbstractXWPFSDT> sdts = new ArrayList<AbstractXWPFSDT>();
for (IBodyElement e : elements) {
if (e instanceof XWPFSDT) {
XWPFSDT sdt = (XWPFSDT) e;
System.out.println("block: " + sdt);
sdts.add(sdt);
} else if (e instanceof XWPFParagraph) {
XWPFParagraph p = (XWPFParagraph) e;
for (IRunElement e2 : p.getIRuns()) {
if (e2 instanceof XWPFSDT) {
XWPFSDT sdt = (XWPFSDT) e2;
System.out.println("inline: " + sdt);
sdts.add(sdt);
}
}
}
}
return sdts;
}
*/
private static List<XWPFSDT> extractSDTsFromBody(XWPFDocument document) {
XWPFSDT sdt;
XmlCursor xmlcursor = document.getDocument().getBody().newCursor();
QName qnameSdt = new QName("http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main", "sdt", "w");
List<XWPFSDT> allsdts = new ArrayList<XWPFSDT>();
while (xmlcursor.hasNextToken()) {
XmlCursor.TokenType tokentype = xmlcursor.toNextToken();
if (tokentype.isStart()) {
if (qnameSdt.equals(xmlcursor.getName())) {
if (xmlcursor.getObject() instanceof CTSdtRun) {
sdt = new XWPFSDT((CTSdtRun)xmlcursor.getObject(), document);
//System.out.println("inline: " + sdt);
allsdts.add(sdt);
} else if (xmlcursor.getObject() instanceof CTSdtBlock) {
sdt = new XWPFSDT((CTSdtBlock)xmlcursor.getObject(), document);
//System.out.println("block: " + sdt);
allsdts.add(sdt);
}
}
}
}
return allsdts;
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
XWPFDocument document = new XWPFDocument(new FileInputStream("WordDataCollectingForm.docx"));
/*
List<IBodyElement> bodyelements = document.getBodyElements();
List<AbstractXWPFSDT> sdts = extractSDTsFromBodyElements(bodyelements);
*/
List<XWPFSDT> allsdts = extractSDTsFromBody(document);
for (XWPFSDT sdt : allsdts) {
//System.out.println(sdt);
String title = sdt.getTitle();
String content = sdt.getContent().getText();
if (!(title == null) && !(title.isEmpty())) {
System.out.println(title + ": " + content);
} else {
System.out.println("====sdt without title====");
}
}
document.close();
}
}