Replacing variables in a word document template with java

Question

I want to load a template word document to add content to and save as new document. I'm working on .doc file.

After a long research I only found solutions for docx :

http://www.smartjava.org/content/create-complex-word-docx-documents-programatically-docx4j

http://www.sambhashanam.com/mail-merge-in-java-for-microsoft-word-document-part-i/

So I want to replace any variable written in this format: $VAR by its value. Can I do it with velocity or Apache-poi, what is the best solution for it. Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Yes, you can do it using Apache-POI. Your variable names must be unique. See the following code

import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.FileNotFoundException;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import org.apache.poi.hwpf.HWPFDocument;
import org.apache.poi.hwpf.usermodel.CharacterRun;
import org.apache.poi.hwpf.usermodel.Paragraph;
import org.apache.poi.hwpf.usermodel.Range;
import org.apache.poi.hwpf.usermodel.Section;
import org.apache.poi.poifs.filesystem.POIFSFileSystem;

public class HWPFTest {
    public static void main(String[] args){
        String filePath = "F:\\Sample.doc";
        POIFSFileSystem fs = null;        
        try {            
            fs = new POIFSFileSystem(new FileInputStream(filePath));            
            HWPFDocument doc = new HWPFDocument(fs);
            doc = replaceText(doc, "$VAR", "MyValue1");
            saveWord(filePath, doc);
        }
        catch(FileNotFoundException e){
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        catch(IOException e){
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    private static HWPFDocument replaceText(HWPFDocument doc, String findText, String replaceText){
        Range r1 = doc.getRange(); 

        for (int i = 0; i < r1.numSections(); ++i ) { 
            Section s = r1.getSection(i); 
            for (int x = 0; x < s.numParagraphs(); x++) { 
                Paragraph p = s.getParagraph(x); 
                for (int z = 0; z < p.numCharacterRuns(); z++) { 
                    CharacterRun run = p.getCharacterRun(z); 
                    String text = run.text();
                    if(text.contains(findText)) {
                        run.replaceText(findText, replaceText);
                    } 
                }
            }
        } 
        return doc;
    }

    private static void saveWord(String filePath, HWPFDocument doc) throws FileNotFoundException, IOException{
        FileOutputStream out = null;
        try{
            out = new FileOutputStream(filePath);
            doc.write(out);
        }
        finally{
            out.close();
        }
    }
}