paradocx builds on the Open Office XML Spec provided by openpack to provide interfaces for working with Microsoft Word documents in the Office 2007 'docx' format.

Introduction

Constructing simple documents using Paradocx is fairly straightforward:

>>> import paradocx
>>> doc = paradocx.Document()
>>> doc.paragraph('Things to do', style='Heading 1')
<Element {http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main}p at 0x22a1240>
>>> doc.paragraph('First, spend some time learning paradocx usage.')
<Element {http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main}p at 0x22a12d0>
>>> doc.paragraph('Then, put together some examples')
<Element {http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main}p at 0x22a1240>
>>> doc.paragraph('Finally, put those examples in the paradocx documentation')
<Element {http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main}p at 0x22a12d0>
>>> doc.save('mydoc.docx')

Using part-edit from Openpack, one can see the document that was constructed:

> EDITOR=cat part-edit mydoc.docx/word/document.xml
<w:document xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:ve="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:dcmitype="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:r="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships" xmlns:w="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main" xmlns:wp="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/wordprocessingDrawing" xmlns:cp="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/package/2006/metadata/core-properties" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <w:body>
    <w:p>
      <w:pPr>
        <w:pStyle w:val="Heading 1"/>
      </w:pPr>
      <w:r>
        <w:t>Things to do</w:t>
      </w:r>
    </w:p>
    <w:p>
      <w:r>
        <w:t>First, spend some time learning paradocx usage.</w:t>
      </w:r>
    </w:p>
    <w:p>
      <w:r>
        <w:t>Then, put together some examples</w:t>
      </w:r>
    </w:p>
    <w:p>
      <w:r>
        <w:t>Finally, put those examples in the paradocx documentation</w:t>
      </w:r>
    </w:p>
  </w:body>
</w:document>

One may also append tables to a document:

>>> import paradocx
>>> doc = paradocx.Document()
>>> doc.table([['a', 'b', 'c'], ['1', '2', '3']])
<Element {http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main}tbl at 0x2231240>
>>> doc.save('data.docx')

Object Model and Advanced Usage

The core object for a Word document is the paradocx.package.WordPackage. All operations involving constructing a Word document use some form of this class (the paradocx.Document subclasses WordPackage).

See the source for a trivial example of usage.

Each WordPackage is a container of a number of related parts. The parts represent the various aspects of a document. The following example, adapted from real-world usage, shows how one might construct a more complex structure from a series of XML templates on the file system:

import string

def load_template(name, **params):
    with open(name) as f:
        template = string.Template(f.read())
    return template.substitute(params)

doc = WordPackage()
doc.start_part.data = load_template('document.xml', text="Hello world")

# styles
styles = StylesPart(doc)
doc.add(styles)
styles.data = load_template('styles.xml')
doc.start_part.relate(styles)

title = "My initial document"

# Header for cover page
cover_header = HeaderPart(doc, '/word/cover-header.xml')
doc.add(cover_header)
cover_header.data = load_template('cover-header.xml', title=title)
doc.start_part.relate(cover_header, 'PmxHdr0')

# body header
header = HeaderPart(doc)
doc.add(header)
header.data = load_template('header.xml', title=title)
doc.start_part.relate(header, 'PmxHdr1')

# body footer
footer = FooterPart(doc)
doc.add(footer)
footer.data = load_template('footer.xml',
    date=unicode(datetime.datetime.now()))
doc.start_part.relate(footer, 'PmxFtr1')

# image1
image1 = ImagePart(doc, '/word/media/logo.png')
doc.add(image1, override=False)
with open('my_logo.png', 'rb') as logo_data:
    image1.data = logo_data.read()
doc.start_part.relate(image1, 'Logo1')
header.relate(image1, 'Logo1')
# cover page uses the logo, so relate it
cover_header.relate(image1, 'Logo1')

# settings
settings = SettingsPart(doc)
doc.add(settings)
settings.data = load_template('settings.xml')
doc.start_part.relate(settings)

doc.save(...)

For more details on constructing the XML data for the underlying parts, consider using a reference document and the OpenPack tools for inspecting the document for the necessary elements, or consider reading some of the resources at the Microsoft Dev Center or read up on the standards developed around Office Open XML.

Testing

Paradocx uses tox for running the tests. To test, simply invoke tox on the repo.