feature: Document.variables

[dwapstra]

I have a document that has variables that are stored in word/settings.xml in docVars/docVar with name and value. Is it possible to add support for updating these names and values?

[scanny]

Hi @dwapstra, can you send a sample document having some variables of the kind you're after?

Alternatively you could post the XML of the settings.xml part if that's easier.

[dwapstra]

Hi Steve,

Partial sample XML:

<w:settings>
    <w:docVars>
        <w:docVar w:name="DocID" w:val="Please enter the document ID."/>
        <w:docVar w:name="Folder" w:val="Please enter the folder name"/>
        <w:docVar w:name="Check" w:val="false"/>
     </w:docVars>
 </w:settings>

Regards,
Dave

[scanny]

Implementation Notes:

Corresponds to MS API Document.Variables:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff834524.aspx

Implementation will require:

• Document.variables
• DocumentPart.settings_part
• SettingsPart
• SettingsPart.variables
• Variables class
• Variable class

[scanny]

Hi @dwapstra, thanks for the snippet, that gave me enough to locate the right part of the MS API to use as a model.

This one's going to be a fairly big nut as you can see by the number of components that will need to be added. I expect it would be a year or more before we'd get to this at the present velocity.

What I can possibly do is add in the DocumentPart.settings_part piece that would at least give you direct access to the XML of the settings.xml part. Then from there you could use lxml and xpath types of calls to get to the fields you wanted.

Something like:

settings_part = document._document_part.settings_part
settings_elm = settings_part.element
docVars = settings_elm.xpath('w:docVars/w:docVar')
for docVar in docVars:
    print('%s %s' % (docVar.get(qn(w:name)), docVar.get(qn(w:val)))

Let me know if that would be of interest. I'm planning to enable a few of the other parts here in the next couple months for similar purposes.

[dwapstra]

Hi @scanny , direct access to the XML would be a great help!