OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath - Low-level XML navigation in the documents
This module is a low-level class which uses OODoc::File (without inheriting anything from it) along with the classes defined in the XML::Twig module. It's a common basis for the other, more user- friendly, document-oriented modules.
The OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath class should not be explicitly used in the applications, because all its features are available in more user-oriented classes such as OODoc::Text, OODoc::Styles, OODoc::Image, OODoc::Document and OODoc::Meta. The present manual page is provided to describe the common methods and properties that are available with all these classes.
This chapter can be skipped by programmers who are only interested in document types handled by the specialist classes which follow. Understanding these classes is easier and using them requires less Perl and XML expertise. However, calling OODoc::XPath remains a good rescue option as it allows all kinds of operations on all types of XML members contained in any OpenOffice.org document.
This class is the common foundation of OODoc::Meta, OODoc::Text, OODoc::Styles and OODoc::Image. It contains the lowest layer of navigation services for XML documents and handles the link with OODoc::File for file access. Its primary role is as an interface with the XML::Twig API.
In the following chapters, you will see "elements" often mentioned. When it says that a module expects a parameter or returns an element (either singly or as a list), it is referring to an XML element. It is important to distinguish elements from their content (elements being simply references to XML data structures). To read or modify the content of an element such as its text or XML attributes, use the accessors also available within OODoc::XPath.
In most cases where XPath methods require a reference to an element as an argument, there are two ways of proceeding:
- reference the element directly (obtained previously)
- or give an XPath expression and a position, being a string and an integer respectively [2]
The second way requires the knowledge of an appropriate XPath expression (according the OOo/OpenDocument XML format specification). And a given XPath expression is not necessarily the same with an OpenDocument as in an OpenOffice.org document. So you should preferently use high level accessors (provided by derivative classes such as OODoc::Document) and avoid XPath hardcoding. However, you know you can at any time reach any element with XPath.
Some methods accept both forms which means that if the first parameter is recognised as an element reference, the position does not need to be given. Therefore the number of arguments for certain OODoc::XPath methods can vary.
For those who really want to access all areas there are also OODoc::XPath methods which allow unrestricted access to every element or XML attribute via an access path in XPath syntax. If you are into this kind of thing, we recommend you obtain good syntax reference manuals for XPath and OpenOffice.org and a supply of aspirin.
Methods which may return several lines of text (e.g. getTextList) do so either in the form of an unique character string containing "\n" separators or in table form.
Unless otherwise stated, the word 'document' in this chapter only refers to XML documents contained within OODoc::XPath objects and not, say, OpenOffice.org files (as an end user would use).
Amongst the different methods which return elements, attributes or text, some are called getXxx, others selectXxx or findXxx. Read methods whose names start with "get" generally refer to an unfiltered object or list, whereas others return an object or list filtered according to a parameter value. In this latter case the search parameter is treated as a standard expression and not an exact value. This means that if the search criteria is "xyz", all text containing "xyz" will be considered a match. To restrict the search to text exactly equal to "xyz", use "^xyz$" as the search criteria (following Perl regular expression syntax).
Several methods allow you to place copies of or references to elements (from other documents or from other positions in the same document) in any position in the current document. This offers powerful manoeuvrability but only if these placements conform with the destination position's context [3] .
For advanced users familiar with the XML::Twig API, it might be interesting to know that all the objects called "elements" in the following chapters are objects of the OpenOffice::OODoc::Element class, which is an XML::Twig::Elt derivative. So all methods associated with this class are directly applicable to these elements, on top of the functionality described in this manual. However, the knowledge of XML::Twig is not mandatory.
Important note: The applications should not explicitly work with this class. We recommend using OODoc::Meta and OODoc::Document (which are both OODoc::XPath derivatives). These two objects provide highest-level methods which are neater and more productive. Explicit use of OODoc::XPath methods (which sometimes require large numbers of parameters) should only be considered as a last resort in unexpected circumstances for access to any element or XML attribute not handled by more friendly methods. However, the present manual chapter could prove helpful because all the common features of OODoc::Meta and OODoc::Document are described here.
Short Form: ooXPath(<parameters>) Returns a new instance of XPath, containing a well-formed XML document given directly or indirectly as a parameter. Example: my $doc = ooXPath ( file => "myfile.sxc", member => "content" ); # ... lot of processing ... $doc->save; Returns a new document object. In the example above, the object is loaded from a regular OOo file, that is the most current option, but there are other possibilities. It's possible to use flat XML (available as a string in memory, or loaded from a file). In addition, this constructor is able to create a new document from scratch. Parameters are named (hash key => value). The constructor must get at least one parameter giving a means of obtaining the XML document that it will represent. Several options are available; each one is represented through the following examples: # option 1 (using an existing flat XML document) my $doc = ooXPath(xml => $xml_string); # option 2 (using a previously created OOo file interface) my $oofile = ooFile('source.sxw'); my $doc = ooXPath(archive => $oofile, member => 'meta'); # option 3 (using a regular OOo file directly) my $doc = ooXPath(file => 'source.sxw', member => 'content'); # option 4 (multiple instances aginst a single file) my $content = ooXPath(file => 'source.sxw', member => 'content'); my $meta = ooXPath(file => $content, member => 'meta'); my $styles = ooXPath(file => $content, member => 'styles'); Remember "ooXPath()" represents "OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath->new()" in the instructions above, and you can (and should) use this shortcut provided that you have loaded the main OpenOffice::OODoc module, and not only and explicitly the OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath module. The first form uses an XML string directly (previously loaded or created by the program). To be used for very specific applications working with flat XML documents exports and not with standard OOo/OpenDocument files. The second method links OODoc::XPath to an existing OODoc::File object (so-called "archive" because it's a zip archive used through an object-oriented API) and indicates which XML member it is to extract (metadata, content, styles, etc). The OODoc::File is an abstraction of an already open OOo file. It can be shared, i.e. several OODoc::XPath objects can be instantiated with the same OODoc::File object, and this possibility must be used when several OODoc::XPath objects must bring consistent changes in a single file (see option 4 below). In order to create the required OODoc::File object, simply use ooFile() with a filename as argument (for advanced use, see OpenOffice::OODoc::File). The third method is the easiest, because the user just provide a filename and a member, and all the file interface is run silently (i.e. an invisible OODoc::File object is automatically created and used to get the content). It's probably the most used approach; its recommended when the user doesn't need to get more than one member in the same file. The 'member' option is a selector that tells what component is needed (the content of the document, the styles, the metadata, ...) knowing that an OODoc::XPath object can handle only one component. Its default value is 'content'. If the application needs to process, say, the content and the styles in the same session, it must create two, or more, OODoc::XPath objects possibly associated with the same file interface. The appropriate way is shown in our last example above. The first instance is associated with a filename. Then the other instances are created with the first one, provided as the value of the 'file' option instead of a filename. The constructor tries to be user-friendly: if the 'file' value is a character string, it's regarded as a filename, but if this value, is an existing OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath object, the new object is automatically connected to the same file interface as the other one. The file interface is transparently provided by a common shared OpenOffice::OODoc::File object (you can safely ignore the features of this object, but a corresponding manual chapter is available for more details). Be careful: creating more than one OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath objects linked by their 'file' parameters to the same explicit filename (and not linked with each other) produces useless extra I/O operations and possible conflicts. Caution: being associated with a common interface via OODoc::File, none of these OODoc::XPath objects should be deleted before the final save() call for this archive. So by calling a save, the File object "calls up" all the XPath objects which were "connected" to it in order to "ask" each of them for the changes which were made to the XML (content, styles, meta, etc.). The results are unpredictable if any of them is absent when called. If the provided filename has a ".xml" or ".XML" suffix, or whatever the name if the 'flat_xml' option is set to 1, the file is processed as flat XML and not as a regular OOo file. No OODoc::File object is created, and the result of a subsequent call of the save() method produces a flat XML export (and not a regular OOo/OpenDocument file). You can pass the optional parameter 'element' in any case where the constructor is called without the 'xml' parameter. Bearing in mind that an OODoc::XPath object will not necessarily handle an entire XML document, this extra parameter indicates the name of the XML element to be loaded and handled. If the 'element' parameter is not given for an OpenOffice.org document, a default element will be chosen according to the following table: 'meta' => 'office:document-meta' 'content' => 'office:document-content' 'styles' => 'office:document-styles' 'settings' => 'office:document-settings' 'manifest' => 'manifest:manifest' Conversely, the 'element' parameter becomes mandatory if the chosen XML element is not listed above. Through OODoc::File, OODoc::XPath can actually access archives which are not necessarily in OpenOffice.org format and may be, for example, "banks" of presentation and content templates. If the application needs to create a new document, and not process an existing one, an additional option must be passed: create => "class" where "class" must be one of the following list: "text", "spreadsheet", "presentation" or "drawing", according to the needed content class. And, for very special needs, the user can pass an additional "template_path" to select an ad hoc directory of XML templates instead of the default one. This user-provided directory must have the same kind of structure and content as the "templates" subdirectory of the OpenOffice::OODoc installation. An additional 'opendocument' option, set to '1' (or 'true') should be provided if the new document must comply with the OASIS Open Document specification, knowing that the default format is OpenOffice.org v1. Be careful: the 'opendocument' option should not be set against previously existing documents. OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath can create and process either OpenOffice.org documents or Open Documents but can't automatically convert a document from one format to the other one. OODoc::XPath can process OOo documents provided through XML flat files as well as in the compressed (zip) format. The given file is automatically processed as flat XML if either it's name ends by ".xml" or the 'flat_xml' option is set to '1'. When processing a flat XML file, OODoc::XPath doesn't load the OODoc::File zip interface. So, a subsequent call of the save() method can only export the document as flat XML. An optional 'readable_XML' can be passed. If this option is provided and set to 'on', the resulting XML will be smartly indented (and, of course, more space-consuming). This feature is intended for debugging purposes and should not be used in production. The 'local_encoding' option can be set with the appropriate value when a particular character set (and not the default one) must be used for a document. Other optional parameters can also be passed to the constructor (see Properties below).
Adds a new element or existing element to the list of child elements of an existing parent element given first (by [path, position] or by reference). The argument after the position argument can be an XML element name. Example: $content->appendElement ( '//office:body', 0, 'text:p', text => "New text" ); adds a paragraph containing the phrase "New text" to the end of the body of the document [6] . If the 'text' option is omitted, an empty element is created (in the above example it would be an empty paragraph or line feed). You can pass the 'attribute' option which is really a hash whose keys are the XML attribute names and whose values are the XML attribute values. Use of these options depends on the type of document and the type of element and requires knowledge of OpenOffice.org conventions. Example: $my_style = { 'style:name' => 'P1', 'style:family => 'paragraph' }; $content->appendElement ( '//office:automatic-styles', 0, 'style:style', attribute => $my_style ); creates a new paragraph style called 'P1' in the list of "automatic styles" [7] . This method lets you add any kind of element into a document, even exotic ones. With the most common OpenOffice.org objects (e.g. paragraphs), though, it is easier to use the specialist methods contained in other modules. The 'name' argument can be replaced by an existing element in the same OODoc::XPath object or in another. In which case no element is created but the existing element is simply referenced with a new position even though it remains in its old position. Caution: any modification of an element which is referenced several times in one or more documents is made to all references. If you want to add a similar but separate element, you must use replicateElement which produces a new element from the content of an existing one. The 'name' argument can also be replaced by an XML string. This string must correspond to the correct XML description of a UTF-8 encoded [8] OpenOffice.org element. For example, it could be a string which had been previously exported using the exportXMLElement method of OODoc::XPath, or extracted from an OpenOffice.org file by some other application [9] . The following piece of code produces the same result as the first example: $xml = '<text:p text:style-name="Standard">' . 'New text' . '</text:p>'; $content->appendElement ( '//office:body', 0, $xml ); Using this method, after one or more element creations by direct importation of XML strings, it might be useful to call the reorganize method (but not absolutely necessary).
Cancels the entire document contents of the current instance and replaces it with a reference to the contents of another OODoc::XPath object. Example: $doc1 = OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath->new ( file => 'template.sxc', member => 'styles' ); $doc2 = OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath->new ( file => 'sheet.sxc', member => 'styles' ); $doc2->cloneContent($doc1); $doc2->save; This sequence replaces the styles and page layout of 'sheet.sxc' with those of 'template.sxc'. The above example could easily have been written without even using OODoc::XPath by acting directly on the files. For example, extract the 'styles.xml' member from 'template.sxc' and insert it into 'sheet.sxc'. The use of OODoc::XPath and the cloneContent method guarantees that the transferred content corresponds to an OpenOffice.org document and allows reads/writes to it on the fly. Caution: the "cloned" content is not physically copied. Calling this method references one single physical content in two documents. Any modifications made to the content of either of these two documents applies equally to the other and vice-versa.
Accessor to get or set the class of the document content. If the current member is a document content, returns its class according to the OpenOffice.org terminology, i.e. one of the following values: "text", "spreadsheet", "presentation", or "drawing". Returns an empty string if the current member is not a document content (if it's, for example, the "meta" or "styles" member). This accessor is read-only.
Creates a special element containing repeated spaces. Such an element can be used in order to insert a sequence of more than spaces in a text container. See setText() and extendText().
Creates a new element without attributes which is not inserted in a document. Example: my $element = $doc->createElement ('my_element', 'its content'); creates a new XML element without attributes and returns its reference. Instead of a name, the first argument can be the full XML description of the element. Example: my $element = $doc->createElement ('<text:p>My text</text:p>'); This new element is temporary: it is not linked to any document. It is destined to be used later by another method. The name can contain a namespace prefix which would look like this: 'namespace:name'. In its second form, a well-formed XML string can be supplied as a single argument. The recognition criteria is the presence of the "<" character at the beginning of the argument. See appendElement for comments on the direct insertion of XML. Explicit calls to createElement should be rare. This method is normally called silently by higher-level methods which are capable of creating an element, inserting it in a document's XML tree and giving it attributes (see appendElement and insertElement).
Caution: this method is a non-exported class method. It must be used like this: OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath::decode_text($utf8_string); and not from an OODoc::XPath instance. Decodes a UTF8 [10] string and returns an 8 bit character [11] translation of it out of the user's character set, as defined by the following variable: $OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath::LOCAL_CHARSET for which the default value is 'ISO-8859-1' [12] . Explicit calls to this method should be rare. It is used internally by methods which return text extracted from document content (e.g. getText). Warning to contributors: any method which returns text extracted from OpenOffice.org documents is based on decode_text; so any modification or improvement of the decoding logic should be made there.
Class method. Encodes "local" character strings (for writing to OpenOffice.org documents). Example: $string = OpenOffice::OODoc::encode_text($local_string); The local character string is defined by the following global variable: $OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath::LOCAL_CHARSET for which the default value is 'ISO-8859-1'. Explicit calls to this method should generally be avoided. It is used internally by methods which insert text or attribute values into documents (e.g. setText).
Deletes the calling document object. Recommended as soon as the object is no longer needed by the application, and sometimes mandatory to avoid memory leaks, especially in long-running processes.
Returns the XML string for use by another application representing the body of a document, without UTF8 decoding.
See getXMLContent()
Returns the XML string which represents a particular document element (style definition, paragraph, table cell, object, etc.) for use by another application without UTF8 decoding. This method is principally designed to allow remote exchanges of elements between programs using any XML storage or transfer method. It acts as "sender" whilst the "receiver" can use appendElement or insertElement (for example) to insert any exported elements into a document. Example: # sender programme # ... open (EXPORT, "> transfer.xml"); print EXPORT $doc->exportXMLElement('//text:p', 15); close EXPORT; # receiver programme # ... open (IMPORT, "< transfer.xml"); $doc->appendElement('//office:body', 0, <IMPORT>); close (IMPORT); In this example, a paragraph is transferred but it could just as easily be any content, presentation or metadata element. Conversely, this method is not needed when transferring an element from one document to another in the same program (or from one document position to another). An element can be copied directly from within the same program by reference or replication without going via its XML (see appendElement, insertElement and replicateElement).
Appends the given text to the previous content of the given element. Example: $doc->setText($p, "Initial content"); $doc->extendText($p, " extended"); Assuming $p is a regular text element (ex: a paragraph), its content becomes "Initial content extended". If the second argument is an element itself, it's appended as is to the first element. This feature can be used, for example, in order to append sequences of repeated spaces: $doc->setText($p, "Begin"); $spaces = $doc->createSpaces(6); $doc->extentText($p, $spaces); $doc->extendText($p, "End"); After the code sequence above, the $p element contains: "Begin End" knowing that a single string containing repeated spaces could not be properly processed by extendtext() or setText(). (See also setText()).
Returns a list of child elements (from a document's tree) of the element given as an argument whose content agrees with the 'filter' parameter. The filter can be an exact string match or a regular expression. If the filter is omitted or contains a wildcard expression like '.*', the returned list will contain all child elements without condition. If the third argument ('replacement') is given, every string which matches the filter in each child element will be replaced by this 'replacement' value. This 'replacement' argument can be a character string or a function reference. (See replaceText method below.) Filtering and possible replacement only affects an element's content and not its attributes [13] . This method is mostly for internal use. We recommend using other methods for the selective extraction of elements.
Returns the 'name' value of the chosen element (or undef if name is not defined or if the element does not exist). Example: my $style = $doc->getAttribute('//text:p', 15, 'text:style-name'); returns the style for paragraph 15.
Returns a list of the element's attributes in the form of a hash whose keys are the attributes' XML names.
Returns an element's reference from an XPath path and a position (or undef if the given path does not indicate an existing element). Position indicators start at 0 just like in Perl tables (and other programming languages). Example: my $p = $doc->getElement('//table:table', 0) indicates an element containing the first table of a text document or first sheet of a spreadsheet. Positions can also be counted backwards from the end by giving negative values, i.e. position -1 being the last element. Thus: my $h = $doc->getElement('//text:h', -2); indicates the second-last header of a text document. Caution: the position indicators used here are not the same in XPath. In XPath indicators start at 1 and negative values are not allowed. So, the first element "text:p" would be shown as "//text:p[1]" if using the getNodeByXPath method (see below), whereas if using getElement it would be at position 0. An XPath expression such as "//text:p[-1]" would return nothing. When successful, this method ensures that the returned object is indeed an element and not another type of node (e.g. attribute, text, comment, etc.)
Returns a list of all elements at a specified path. Example: my @ref_summary = $doc->getElementList('//text:h'); The above example returns a table containing all header elements of a text document. The path can of course be a more complex XPath expression stipulating, for example, a selection of attribute values. In most cases, you should avoid complicating things unnecessarily (especially in Text, Image and Styles modules), as there are methods for searching by element type, attribute and content which are much easier to use and avoid the need to supply XPath expressions. Note: the returned list contains elements in the sense of getElement and not a list of element contents.
A low-level method which returns the node corresponding to the given XPath expression, if it exists in the document. This method (which gives unrestricted access to the entire content of a document) is designed for use with the unexpected. You will obviously need to be familiar with XPath syntax (not documented here) as well as OpenOffice.org document structure. See also selectNodesByXPath.
Returns text in the local character set, possibly UTF-8 decoded, contained in the element given as an argument (by path/position or by reference). Two equivalent examples: # version 1 my $element = $doc->getElement('//text:p', 4); my $text = $doc->getText($element); # version 2 my $text = $doc->getText('//text:p', 4); Version 2 is better if the only aim is to get the text from paragraph 4. Version 1 is better, however, if during the course of the program you want to perform other operations on the same paragraph. Giving an element's reference will mean avoiding element handling methods having to recalculate a reference from the XPath path.
Returns text from all elements in the specified path. Example: my $summary = $doc->getTextList('//text:h'); my $report = $doc->getTextList('//text:span'); The $summary variable contains a concatenation of all headers. $report contains all the words or character strings that "stand out" which the user has designated by their context, e.g. words in italics in a non-italic paragraph. In a list context, the returned data is a table, each of whose elements contains the text of an XML element. In a scalar context (as in our two examples), the returned value is a unique piece of editable text and each element's content is separated from that of the following element by a line feed.
Without argument, returns a document's entire XML content. Exports the entire XML content to a flat file, if a file handle is provided. Note: the exported data are UTF8-encoded. Example: open my $fh, ">:utf8", "myfile.xml"; $doc->getXMLContent($fh); close $fh; Synonym: exportXMLContent()
A low-level method which allows direct access to the value corresponding to the given XPath expression in a document. Character decoding is handled in the same way as with getText. Example: $expression = '//office:automatic-styles' . '/style:style' . '[@style:style-name="P1"]' . '/@style:parent-style-name'; print $doc->getXPathValue($expression); This sequence displays the name of the parent style of automatic style "P1" (if it exists within the document). Remember that more simple methods in Text and/or Styles modules would indeed produce the same result. The optional element reference "context" can be given as an argument either in first or second place. In this case, the search is limited to the section of the document tree below this given element. The default search area is the entire document. Just as with other methods which require XPath paths, this one is primarily for internal use. It should not be used by the majority of applications.
Inserts a new element before or after the element specified by [path, position] or by reference. If the "name" argument is a literal, a new element with the name given is created and then inserted. If the same argument is a reference to an existing element, this element is then simply inserted at the position indicated. This method is useful either for adding new elements or for copying elements from one document to another or from one position to another within the same document. Options are passed as [name => value] i.e.: position => before or position => after allowing you to choose if the insertion should be done before or after the given element. The default position is before. text => "text of element" attribute => $attributes The "attribute" option is itself a hash reference containing one or more attributes in the form [name => value] as in appendElement. When successful, this method returns the inserted element's reference (else undef). Example: my $attributes = { 'text:style-name' => 'Heading 2', 'text:level' => '2' }; $doc->insertElement ( '//text:p', 4, 'text:h', position => 'after', text => 'New section', attribute => $attributes ); This sequence (in an OpenOffice.org Writer document) inserts a level 2 header 'New section' immediately after paragraph 4. The $name argument can be replaced by an existing element. In this case a new reference to the existing element is inserted, without creating a whole new element. In this way you can display an element at several locations or in several documents which is held in memory only once. See the appendElement section for the consequences of having multiple references to the same physical element. Better to use replicateElement to insert separate copies of an element. In the same conditions as in appendElement, the 'name' argument can be replaced by an XML string which describes the element [14] . Note: to add an element to the end of a document, it would obviously be better to use appendElement.
Returns 1 (true) if the current document is an OASIS Open Document. To be used every time the application needs to know the format of the document, knowing that some differences between the two formats can't be completely hidden by the API.
Low-level method allowing the creation or direct modification without restriction (almost) of any document element. It allows "query" expressions in a language similar to XPath. If the given XPath expression crosses several levels of hierarchy, intermediate nodes can be created or modified "on the fly" by creating the necessary path which in turn creates the final node. Example: $doc->makeXPath ( '//office:body/text:p[4 @text:style-name="Text body"]' ); This "query" applies the "Text body" style to paragraph 4 in the body of the document. (In reality you will probably never use it because the setStyle method of the Text module would do the same thing much more simply.) If, as in the above example, a node is accompanied by a position indicator, it cannot be created but must simply act as a mandatory "passage". This method cannot therefore be used to create, for example, an Nth paragraph if there is already an N-1. The only restrictions apply to namespaces which are given as prefixes to element and attribute names. They must be defined in the document i.e. conform to OpenOffice.org specifications. For the rest, this method allows the creation of almost anything anywhere within a document. Its use is reserved for OpenOffice XML specialists. In its second form, a context node can be given as the first argument. If present, the path is sought (and if necessary created) starting from its position. By default, the path begins from the root. The returned value is the final node's reference (found or created). The full "query language" syntax used in this method is not documented here. makeXPath is designed to act more as a base for other OpenOffice::OODoc methods than to be used in applications.
Physically imports an external file into an OpenOffice.org archive associated with an XPath object, if it exists i.e. if the object was created using file or archive parameters. This method only transmits the command to the OODoc::File's raw_import method. Caution: it must not be used with an "active" element i.e. an XML member to which the current XPath object or another XPath object is already associated. Remember too that the import is not actually carried out by OODoc::File until a save and the imported data is therefore not immediately available.
Physically exports a member from an OpenOffice.org archive associated with an XPath object, if it exists i.e. if the object was created using file or archive parameters. This method only transmits the command to the OODoc::File's raw_import method.
Deletes the "attribute" attribute (if found) of the given element by [path, position] or by reference and returns "true". Has no physical effect and returns undef if the attribute has not been defined or if the element does not exist.
Deletes the given element (if found) by [path, position] or by reference and returns "true". Returns undef if the element does not exist.
Technical method for maintaining the structure of the current document, for use only in exceptional circumstances where the application's operations risk destabilising the internal addressing of elements. This will primarily happen when inserting new XML elements in the form of XML strings after the document has been loaded i.e. when the XML parser is again launched to include an "addition" to an already parsed document. Being costly in runtime, this method must not be called immediately after each XML import or other address destabilising operation. A single reorganize after each series of destabilising operations is enough and even then perhaps only before you need to access an element by [path, position]. Address destabilising operations are not an issue if all elements are selected by reference, attribute or content filter. Moreover it is absolutely unnecessary to call reorganize just before calling a save.
Deletes the given element by [path, position] or by reference and inserts another element in its place, either from another location in the same document or from another document. A new element can be supplied under the same conditions as for insertElement. By default or by using the mode => 'copy' option, it is a copy of the new element which is inserted. With the mode => 'reference' option, it is only a reference which is inserted. See the section on appendElement for comments on the subject of multiple references to a single physical element.
Replaces all sub-strings which match "filter" with "replacement" in the text of an element indicated by [path, position] or by reference and returns the modified text. The "filter" string can be an "exact" literal or a regular expression. Example: $doc->replaceText($p, "C(LIENT|USTOMER)", $contact); replaces each occurrence of "CLIENT" and "CUSTOMER" with the content of the $contact variable in the paragraph $p of document $doc. The "replacement" argument can be a function reference. In which case, the function is called each time the string is matched, and the value returned by the function is used as the replacement value. sub action { my $arg = shift; my $text = shift; print "$arg : $text\n"; return "OK"; } $doc->replaceText($p, $expression, \&action, "Found"); displays "Found: <text>" (where <text> is the text retrieved) each time a string matches $expression and replaces this string with "OK". If $expression contains an "exact" string, then clearly the text displayed will always be the same string. However, if it happens to be a regular expression, it is in effect the text retrieved which will be displayed. Generally speaking, if the replacement value is a function reference, the called function receives the remainder of the arguments which follow it, in this order:
Makes a copy of the given element and inserts it into the current document according to 'position' and, where indicated, according to a hash of options. If 'position' is another existing element then the new element is inserted after the children of the existing element, except where either pairs position=>'after' or position=>'before' are specified in the list of options. In this case, the insertion is made at the same hierarchical level as the positional element according to the same logic as for insertElement [15] . If the 'position' argument is given as 'end', then the new element is added at the last child position of the root element. If the 'position' argument is given as 'body', then the new element is added at the end of the list of child elements of the element which corresponds to the getBody value (requires an OODoc::XPath type object, by default 'office:body'). If the 'position' argument is an existing element, then the new element is inserted immediately before the given element by default. If the pair position=>'after' are in the options list, the element is inserted immediately after, as with insertElement. Example: my $template = $doc_source->selectElementByAttribute ( '//style::style', 'style:name', 'Text body' ); my $position = $doc_target->getElement ('//office:styles', 0); $doc_target->replicateElement($template, $position); This sequence adds a style 'Body of text' to the styles collection of $doc_target which copies exactly the style of the same name in $doc_source. Obviously, the section of code dealing with the search for the element to copy and its position is the most laborious. This method physically creates a new element which is an exact copy of the given element, but which is physically separate from it. This method is slower than simply modifying an existing element or inserting an element reference. Note: If the user needs only a "free" copy of the element (out of the document structure, to be later attached), the XML::Twig::Elt copy() method should be preferred.
Saves the content of the current document through a physical output. The behaviour of this method depends on the way the current OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath object has been created. If the document is explicitly linked (through the 'file' option of it's constructor) to a regular OOo or OpenDocument file, the document is saved either in the source file, or (if a filename is provided as an argument) in a new file. If the document is linked to the same file interface as one or more other OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath objects, the behaviour is the same as in the previous case, but all the changes made by all the linked objects are automatically saved in the target file. Example: my $content = ooXPath ( file => 'source.odt', member => 'content' ); my $styles = ooXPath ( file => $content, member => 'styles' ) my $meta = ooXPath ( file => $content, member => 'meta' ); # ... a lot of content processing # ... a lot of style processing # ... a lot of metadata processing $content->save('target.odt'); At the end of the sequence above, all the changes made through the $content, $styles and $meta objects are saved in 'target.odt' because these objects share a common file interface. Note that in such a situation, the save() method can be issued from anyone of the objects sharing the file interface (i.e. $content->save could be replaced by $styles->save or $meta->save). Note: OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath doesn't really know anything about the physical archive file; here save() is only a stub method and the real job is done by the save() method of the associated OpenOffice::OODoc::File object. If the document is not associated with a regular OpenOffice.org compressed file (used through an OODoc::File object), it's saved as "flat XML" to the given file. In such a situation, if the file name is not provided, the source XML file (if any) is used as the target. Note: if you need to save a document as flat XML while it's associated with an OpenOffice.org file, you should use exportXMLContent() with an application-provided file handle.
Returns the first (or only) element whose name matches "filter" from within the child elements of the given element indicated by [path, position] or by reference. "filter" is taken to be a regular expression. If several values match the filter, the first of these is returned (in the XML's physical order which is not necessarily the logical order of the document). See the comments about selectElementByAttribute if wanting to select an exact name. Returns undef if no elements match the condition. Returns the first (or only) child (if there are more than one) without anything else if no filter is given or if the filter uses wildcards (".*").
Like selectChildElementByName, but returns a list of all elements which match the condition. Example: my @search_words = $doc->selectChildElementsByName ('//text:p', 4, 'text:span'); returns a list of elements from paragraph 4 which correspond to text which has particular attributes which distinguish it from the rest of the paragraph (colour, font, etc.)
Returns a list of elements corresponding to a given XPath path and whose text matches the filter (regular expression). The "context" argument, if given, is an element reference which limits the search to its own child elements. The search is carried out in the entire document by default. An element is selected if the search string is found in its own text or in the text of any element descended from it. E.g. An image element (draw:image) can be selected from the value of its attached "description" field. You can replace all strings matching the search criteria with the 'replacement' string, on the fly, if the latter is given as an argument after the filter. Lastly, instead of a replacement string, you can pass a subroutine's reference which will run (in call back mode) each time the search string is matched. If this subroutine returns a defined value, this value is used as the replacement string. The subroutine will automatically receive the rest of the arguments, in this order: If, as is generally the case, you are working exclusively with text elements (paragraphs, headers, etc.), you would be better to use selectElementsByContent of the Text module which is easier to use and does not require an XPath expression. Here is an example which returns the list of images whose descriptors contain the word "landscape" and displays the name of each selected image: sub printMessage { my $doc = shift; my $element = shift; my $image = $element->parentNode; print "Name: " . $image->find('@draw:name') . "\n"; } my @list = $doc->selectElements ( '//draw:image/svg:desc', 'landscape', \&printMessage, $doc ); Never use this example of code in a real application as it is both purely for demonstration and unnecessarily complex. You can perform the same operation much more simply using the OODoc::Image module.
In a list context, returns a list of elements at the given path with the given attribute which contain a value matching the filter's regular expression. In a scalar context, returns the first (or only) element which matches the same condition. Returns undef if no elements match the condition. Example: my @paragraph_styles = $doc->selectElementsByAttribute ('style:style', 'style:family', 'paragraph'); returns the list of elements which describe the paragraph styles of document $doc. Caution: the filter is treated as a regular expression and not as a classic string. This means that the above piece of code might not only return the elements whose "style:family" attribute equals "paragraph", but also all those in which the same attribute contains the word "paragraph". You must therefore use the appropriate syntax (in regex language) if you want to select an exact value, which in this case would be "^paragraph$".
Like selectElementsByAttribute in a scalar context. Returns the first (or only) element at the given path which has the given attribute containing the given value. Returns undef if no elements match the condition.
This low-level method returns a list of nodes (which are not necessarily elements) which match the give XPath expression. See getNodeByXPath for options and comments.
Modifies or adds one or more attributes to an element. The element is indicated by reference or by [path, position]. The list of attributes is given in the form of a hash name => value. Example: my $h = $doc->getElement('//text:h', 12); my %attributes = ( 'text:style-name' => 'My Header', 'text:level => '3' ); $doc->setAttributes($h, %attributes); This sequence gives the 'My Header' style and level 3 to the 13th "header" element in the document.
Use the given text as the content of the given element. Any previous content is replaced by the given one. Note: The strings containing repeated spaces are not properly processed. A sequence of repeated spaces, whatever its length, is replaced by a single space in the target document. So $doc->setText($p, "Begin End"); produces the same visible result as $doc->setText($p, "Begin End"); See createSpaces() and extendText() for a workaround if you need to insert repeated spaces. (See also extendText())
Every document element is an OpenOffice::OODoc::Element object, and OpenOffice::OODoc::Element inherits all the features of XML::Twig::Elt, including the very powerful copy, cut, paste, move and replace methods. These methods are described in the XML::Twig documentation. (Remember these methods belong to the element and not to the document !)
Appends a node as the last child of the calling node. If the argument is an existing node, it'a appended as is. If the argument is a string, a new node is created, with the given string as the XML tag name.
Append a text node (PCDATA) as the last child of the calling element.
Produces one or more copies of the calling element and inserts the copies before or after it. The position argument should be 'before' or 'after'; its default is 'after'. Technically, the position argument could be anyone of the position options of the XML::Twig::Elt->paste method, including 'first_child', 'last_child' or 'within'; but any other than 'before' and 'after' probably don't make sense in an OpenDocument-compliant data structure. Without any argument, the calling element is replicated once. Example : my $row = $doc->getTableRow("Table1", -1); $row->replicateNode(5); This sequence appends 5 more rows to a table; each new row is a copy of the last original row, including each individual cell and its content.
Like selectChildElements() below, but returns only the first node matching the filter. Note: the first_child() method of XML::Twig::Elt should be preferred when the filter is the exact tag name of the needed element.
Selects the children with XML tag names matching a given filter. The filter is processed as a regex. Note: the children() method of XML::Twig::Elt should be preferred if the filter is the exact tag name of the needed elements.
No class variables are exported; the applications, if needed, must access them using their full name ($OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath:XXX) The following names should be prefixed explicitly with "$OpenOffice::OODoc::XPath::" CHARS_TO_ESCAPE contains the list of reserved characters which, in XML, should be replaced by escape sequences. OO_CHARSET indicates the character set used for OpenOffice.org document encoding and whose default value is 'utf8' (it should not be changed). LOCAL_CHARSET indicates the user's character set, by default 'iso-8859-1'; it must be changed according to the real user's needs (warning: there is no kind of automatic adaptation to the user's locales, so the application must explicitly load the right value in this variable); it should be done using the localEncoding() accessor (see the OpenOffice::OODoc(3) man page and, for the list of supported character sets, the Encode module's documentation). The content of these three variables should not normally be directly modified by the applications. Instance hash variables are : 'archive' => <oodoc_file_object> 'file' => <OpenOffice.org file> 'member' => <file member> 'readable_XML' => <'on' or not> 'local_encoding' => <user's output encoding> 'xml' => <XML string> 'element' => <name of loaded XML element> 'xpath' => <XML::Twig object> 'opendocument' => <true if OASIS Open Document> However, the 'xml' variable is cleared almost immediately after a successful constructor call, in order to save memory. As soon as the corresponding XPath object has been created, the XML source is no longer required. The 'xpath' variable of an OODoc::XPath object contains a reference to the document structure as it's made available through XML::Twig (see CPAN documentation). This object encompasses the entire current XML tree. Each access to XML using OODoc::XPath objects is done via XML::Twig. So, after having run the following command: my $xp = $doc->{'xpath'}; the experienced programmer will be able to use $xp to access all the functionality of the XML::Twig API, bearing in mind that all operations using this interface will have a direct effect on the content of the $doc object. The 'opendocument' property, if true, means that the document is declared as an OASIS Open Document. If this property is false or undef, the document format is OpenOffice.org version 1. This property should not be changed (as long as OpenOffice::OODoc can't change the format of an existing document).
See OpenOffice::OODoc::Notes(3) for the footnote citations ([n]) included in this page.
Copyright 2004-2005 by Genicorp, S.A. (http://www.genicorp.com)
Initial developer: Jean-Marie Gouarne (http://jean.marie.gouarne.online.fr)
Initial English version of the reference manual by Graeme A. Hunter (graeme.hunter@zen.co.uk)
License:
- Genicorp General Public Licence v1.0 - GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1
Contact: jmgdoc@cpan.org
To install OpenOffice::OODoc, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm OpenOffice::OODoc
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install OpenOffice::OODoc
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.