Read data from a Word document (.doc or .docx) using Node.js
Why use this module?
There are a fair number of npm components which can extract text from Word .doc files, but they often appear to require some external helper program, and involve either spawning a process or communicating with a persistent one. That raises the installation and deployment burden as well as the runtime one.
This module is intended to provide a much faster way of reading the text from a Word file, without leaving the Node.js environment.
This means you do not need to install Word, Office, or anything else, and the module will work on all platforms, without any native binary code requirements.
As of version 1.0, this module supports both traditional, OLE-based, Word files (usually .doc), and modern, Open Office-style, ECMA-376 Word files (usually .docx). It can be used both with files and with file contents in a Node.js Buffer.
The object returned from the extract() method is a promise that resolves to a document object, which then provides several views onto different parts of the document contents.
Methods
Main method to open a Word file and retrieve the data. Returns a promise which resolves to a Document . If a Buffer is passed instead of a filename, then the buffer is used directly, instad of reading a disk from the file system.
Retrieves the content text from a Word document. This will handle UNICODE characters correctly, so if there are accented or non-Latin-1 characters present in the document, they’ll show as is in the returned string.
Retrieves the footnote text from a Word document. This will handle UNICODE characters correctly, so if there are accented or non-Latin-1 characters present in the document, they’ll show as is in the returned string.
Retrieves the endnote text from a Word document. This will handle UNICODE characters correctly, so if there are accented or non-Latin-1 characters present in the document, they’ll show as is in the returned string.
Retrieves the header and footer text from a Word document. This will handle UNICODE characters correctly, so if there are accented or non-Latin-1 characters present in the document, they’ll show as is in the returned string.
Note that by default, getHeaders() returns one string, containing all headers and footers. This is compatible with previous versions. If you want to separate headers and footers, use getHeaders() , to return only the headers, and the new method getFooters() (from version 1.0.1) to return the footers separately.
From version 1.0.1. Retrieves the footer text from a Word document. This will handle UNICODE characters correctly, so if there are accented or non-Latin-1 characters present in the document, they’ll show as is in the returned string.
Retrieves the comment bubble text from a Word document. This will handle UNICODE characters correctly, so if there are accented or non-Latin-1 characters present in the document, they’ll show as is in the returned string.
Retrieves the textbox contenttext from a Word document. This will handle UNICODE characters correctly, so if there are accented or non-Latin-1 characters present in the document, they’ll show as is in the returned string.
Note that by default, getTextboxes() returns one string, containing all textbox content from both main document and the headers and footers. You can control what gets included by using the options includeHeadersAndFooters (which defaults to true) and includeBody (also defaults to true). So, as an example, if you only want the body text box content, use: doc.getTextboxes() .
Word documents are everywhere and are used for countless tasks so you may have a requirement to support their generation from within your web application or webpage, this could include downloading a C.V from your personal site to the generation of a report based on data from within your web application that can be printed out or emailed by your client.
Goals
Prerequisites
Step 1 — Setup project
In order to concentrate on the job in hand and to get up and running as quickly as possible we are going to use CodeSandbox and their vanilla starter project. A new CodeSandbox project can be created by opening the following link vanilla JavaScript project.
Step 2 — Install dependencies needed to create a Word document
With the project setup we can now install the two modules/dependencies needed to successfully create and save a Word document. The first package (docx) allows you to build your Word document and the second package (file-saver) gives the ability to save the document locally. Add the two packages using the «Add Dependency» button.
Step 3 — Add a button to create our Word document
Before we start writing the code required to generate our Word documents lets add a button to the index.html file. We can then use this button to fire off the actions needed to generate the Word document.
Parcel Sandboxcharset="UTF-8"/>id="app">
id="generate">Generate Word Documentsrc="src/index.js">
Step 4 — Create a blank Word document
From now one we will be working solely within the index.js JavaScript file, lets start by deleting everything that is currently there as this is not need. All we will need to create a blank word document is the Document and Packer features from the docx module and the saveAs feature from file-saver module.
// Listen for clicks on Generate Word Document buttondocument.getElementById("generate").addEventListener("click",function(event)generateWordDocument(event)>,false)
Once the event listener is triggered we will call a function that will create a new instance of Document from the docx module and send this instance to a saveDocumentToFile function.
functiongenerateWordDocument(event)event.preventDefault()// Create a new instance of Document for the docx moduleletdoc=newDocument()// Call saveDocumentToFile with the document instance and a filenamesaveDocumentToFile(doc,"New Document.docx")>
The saveDocumentToFile function creates a new instance of Packer from the docx modules, Packers in docx are used to turn your JavaScript code into a .docx file. We then send our document instance to Packers toBlob function which in turn converts our instance of Document into a Blob object, a mimeType is added to the Blob and finally the Blob is sent to saveAs feature of the file-saver module which will create the file and prompt you to save or open.
functionsaveDocumentToFile(doc,fileName)// Create new instance of Packer for the docx moduleconstpacker=newPacker()// Create a mime type that will associate the new file with Microsoft WordconstmimeType="application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document"// Create a Blob containing the Document instance and the mimeTypepacker.toBlob(doc).then(blob=>constdocblob=blob.slice(0,blob.size,mimeType)// Save the file using saveAs from the file-saver packagesaveAs(docblob,fileName)>)>
Step 5 — Create content of the Word document
We can now start adding some content to the Word document. We will simply add a title, subtitle, two headings and a long paragraph as this will make it easier to understand once we come to start styling the document.
functiongenerateWordDocument(event)event.preventDefault()letdoc=newDocument()doc.createParagraph("Title")doc.createParagraph("Subtitle")doc.createParagraph("Heading 1")doc.createParagraph("Heading 2")doc.createParagraph("Aliquam gravida quam sapien, quis dapibus eros malesuada vel. Praesent tempor aliquam iaculis. Nam ut neque ex. Curabitur pretium laoreet nunc, ut ornare augue aliquet sed. Pellentesque laoreet sem risus. Cras sodales libero convallis, convallis ex sed, ultrices neque. Sed quis ullamcorper mi. Ut a leo consectetur, scelerisque nibh sit amet, egestas mauris. Donec augue sapien, vestibulum in urna et, cursus feugiat enim. Ut sit amet placerat quam, id tincidunt nulla. Cras et lorem nibh. Suspendisse posuere orci nec ligula mattis vestibulum. Suspendisse in vestibulum urna, non imperdiet enim. Vestibulum vel dolor eget neque iaculis ultrices.")saveDocumentToFile(doc,"New Document.docx")>
The Word document will now look something like this
Step 6 — Style the Word document
Now that we have some content we can look at styling the document. Firstly we will create a theme object that will hold all the information about which fonts and colours we want to use.
functiongenerateWordDocument(event)event.preventDefault()// Create new instance of Document for the docx moduleletdoc=newDocument()doc.theme=font:normal:family:"Calibri",color:"303856",>,header:family:"Calibri Light">,>,title:color:"4ABDAC",>,headings:one:color:"FC4A1A",>,two:color:"F7B733",>,>,>..// Call saveDocumentToFile withe the document instance and a filenamesaveDocumentToFile(doc,"New Document.docx")>
Custom Heading 1
Custom Heading 2
Custom Title
Custom Subtitle
Custom Normal
These should tie up nicely to the content that we created in Step 5.
You can learn more about styles in Microsoft Word here
functiongenerateWordDocument(event)event.preventDefault()// Create new instance of Document for the docx moduleletdoc=newDocument()..doc.Styles.createParagraphStyle("customHeading1","Custom Heading 1").basedOn("Heading 1").next("Normal").quickFormat().font(doc.theme.font.header.family).size(32).bold().color(doc.theme.headings.one.color).spacing( after:250>)doc.Styles.createParagraphStyle("customHeading2","Custom Heading 2").basedOn("Heading 2").next("Normal").quickFormat().font(doc.theme.font.header.family).size(26).bold().color(doc.theme.headings.two.color).spacing( after:150>)doc.Styles.createParagraphStyle("customTitle","Custom Title").basedOn("Title").next("Normal").quickFormat().font(doc.theme.font.header.family).size(56).bold().color(doc.theme.font.normal.color).spacing( after:250>)doc.Styles.createParagraphStyle("customSubtitle","Custom Subtitle").basedOn("Subtitle").next("Normal").quickFormat().font(doc.theme.font.header.family).size(22).color(doc.theme.font.normal.color).spacing( after:150>)doc.Styles.createParagraphStyle("customNormal","Custom Normal").basedOn("Normal").quickFormat().font(doc.theme.font.normal.family).size(20).color(doc.theme.font.normal.color).spacing( after:150>)..// Call saveDocumentToFile withe the document instance and a filenamesaveDocumentToFile(doc,"New Document.docx")>
With our styles in place we can apply them to our content.
functiongenerateWordDocument(event)event.preventDefault()// Create new instance of Document for the docx moduleletdoc=newDocument()..doc.createParagraph("Title").style("customTitle")doc.createParagraph("Subtitle").style("customSubtitle")doc.createParagraph("Heading 1").style("customHeading1")doc.createParagraph("Heading 2").style("customHeading2")doc.createParagraph("Aliquam gravida quam sapien, quis dapibus eros malesuada vel. Praesent tempor aliquam iaculis. Nam ut neque ex. Curabitur pretium laoreet nunc, ut ornare augue aliquet sed. Pellentesque laoreet sem risus. Cras sodales libero convallis, convallis ex sed, ultrices neque. Sed quis ullamcorper mi. Ut a leo consectetur, scelerisque nibh sit amet, egestas mauris. Donec augue sapien, vestibulum in urna et, cursus feugiat enim. Ut sit amet placerat quam, id tincidunt nulla. Cras et lorem nibh. Suspendisse posuere orci nec ligula mattis vestibulum. Suspendisse in vestibulum urna, non imperdiet enim. Vestibulum vel dolor eget neque iaculis ultrices.").style("customNormal")// Call saveDocumentToFile withe the document instance and a filenamesaveDocumentToFile(doc,"New Document.docx")>
Clicking the ‘Generate Word Document’ button now will create a Word document that look something like this
Conclusion
With the use of a couple of great packages we can easily create a nice looking Word document using solely client side JavaScript. Docx is very powerful and this article only covers the basics to get you up and running with a simple Word document.
