How to edit MS Word documents using Java?

Question

I do have few Word templates, and my requirement is to replace some of the words/place holders in the document based on the user input, using Java. I tried lot of libraries including 2-3 versions of docx4j but nothing work well, they all just didn't do anything!

I know this question has been asked before, but I tried all options I know. So, using what java library I can "really" replace/edit these templates? My preference goes to the "easy to use / Few line of codes" type libraries.

I am using Java 8 and my MS Word templates are in MS Word 2007.

Update

This code is written by using the code sample provided by SO member Joop Eggen

public Main() throws URISyntaxException, IOException, ParserConfigurationException, SAXException
    {
        URI docxUri = new URI("C:/Users/Yohan/Desktop/yohan.docx");
        Map<String, String> zipProperties = new HashMap<>();
        zipProperties.put("encoding", "UTF-8");

         FileSystem zipFS = FileSystems.newFileSystem(docxUri, zipProperties);

           Path documentXmlPath = zipFS.getPath("/word/document.xml");

            DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();

            factory.setNamespaceAware(true);
            DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();

            Document doc = builder.parse(Files.newInputStream(documentXmlPath));

            byte[] content = Files.readAllBytes(documentXmlPath);
            String xml = new String(content, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
            //xml = xml.replace("#DATE#", "2014-09-24");
            xml = xml.replace("#NAME#", StringEscapeUtils.escapeXml("Sniper"));

            content = xml.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
            Files.write(documentXmlPath, content);
    }

However this returns the below error

java.nio.file.ProviderNotFoundException: Provider "C" Not found

at: java.nio.file.FileSystems.newFileSystem(FileSystems.java:341) at java.nio.file.FileSystems.newFileSystem(FileSystems.java:341)

at java.nio.fileFileSystems.newFileSystem(FileSystems.java:276)

Answer 1

One may use for docx (a zip with XML and other files) a java zip file system and XML or text processing.

URI docxUri = ,,, // "jar:file:/C:/... .docx"
Map<String, String> zipProperties = new HashMap<>();
zipProperties.put("encoding", "UTF-8");
try (FileSystem zipFS = FileSystems.newFileSystem(docxUri, zipProperties)) {
    Path documentXmlPath = zipFS.getPath("/word/document.xml");

When using XML:

    DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();

    factory.setNamespaceAware(true);
    DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();

    Document doc = builder.parse(Files.newInputStream(documentXmlPath));
    //Element root = doc.getDocumentElement();

You can then use XPath to find the places, and write the XML back again.

It even might be that you do not need XML but could replace place holders:

    byte[] content = Files.readAllBytes(documentXmlPath);
    String xml = new String(content, StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
    xml = xml.replace("#DATE#", "2014-09-24");
    xml = xml.replace("#NAME#", StringEscapeUtils.escapeXml("Sniper")));
    ...
    content = xml.getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8);
    Files.delete(documentXmlPath);
    Files.write(documentXmlPath, content);

For a fast development, rename a copy of the .docx to a name with the .zip file extension, and inspect the files.

File.write should already apply StandardOpenOption.TRUNCATE_EXISTING, but I have added Files.delete as some error occured. See comments.

Answer 2

Try Apache POI. POI can work with doc and docx, but docx is more documented therefore support of it better.

UPD: You can use XDocReport, which use POI. Also I recomend to use xlsx for templates because it more suitable and more documented

Answer 3

I have spent a few days on this issue, until I found that what makes the difference is the try-with-resources on the FileSystem instance, appearing in Joop Eggen's snippet but not in question snippet:
try (FileSystem zipFS = FileSystems.newFileSystem(docxUri, zipProperties))
Without such try-with-resources block, the FileSystem resource will not be closed (as explained in Java tutorial), and the word document not modified.

Answer 4

Stepping back a bit, there are about 4 different approaches for editing words/placeholders:

• MERGEFIELD or DOCPROPERTY fields (if you are having problems with this in docx4j, then you have probably not set up your input docx correctly)
• content control databinding
• variable replacement on the document surface (either at the DOM/SAX level, or using a library)
• do stuff as XHTML, then import that

Before choosing one, you should decide whether you also need to be able to handle:

• repeating data (eg adding table rows)
• conditional content (eg entire paragraphs which will either be present or absent)
• adding images

If you need these, then MERGEFIELD or DOCPROPERTY fields are probably out (though you can also use IF fields, if you can find a library which supports them). And adding images makes DOM/SAX manipulation as advocated in one of the other answers, messier and error prone.

The other things to consider are:

• your authors: how technical are they? What does that imply for the authoring UI?
• the "user input" you mention for variable replacement, is this given, or is obtaining it part of the problem you are solving?

Answer 5

Please try this to edit or replace the word in document

public class UpdateDocument {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

        UpdateDocument obj = new UpdateDocument();

        obj.updateDocument(
                  "c:\\test\\template.docx",
                  "c:\\test\\output.docx",
                  "Piyush");
    }

    private void updateDocument(String input, String output, String name)
        throws IOException {

        try (XWPFDocument doc = new XWPFDocument(
                Files.newInputStream(Paths.get(input)))
        ) {

            List<XWPFParagraph> xwpfParagraphList = doc.getParagraphs();
            //Iterate over paragraph list and check for the replaceable text in each paragraph
            for (XWPFParagraph xwpfParagraph : xwpfParagraphList) {
                for (XWPFRun xwpfRun : xwpfParagraph.getRuns()) {
                    String docText = xwpfRun.getText(0);
                    //replacement and setting position
                    docText = docText.replace("${name}", name);
                    xwpfRun.setText(docText, 0);
                }
            }

            // save the docs
            try (FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(output)) {
                doc.write(out);
            }

        }

    }

}