A domain service for mail merging Word (OpenXML .docx) files … with repeating data

One requirement that most business apps have is to be able to dynamically generate Word documents. For scalar non-repeating data this is not too difficult in .docx; indeed the file format has built-in support for data binding using Custom XML Parts. However, there is no support for repeating data, at least, not prior to Word 2013. Which is where a little domain service that I’ve been working on comes into play

The service works by accepting a .docx template and an XHTML input document. The @id attribute of the input elements is matched to the tag of the smart tags in the .docx. Repeating lists are specified in the input HTML using <ul> / <li> / <p>, and tables are specified using <table> / <tr> / <td>. The service will clone the template list item / table rows as necessary.

For now, you can grab the code from my github repo (where there’s a more thorough README); in the fullness of time it’ll be donated into Apache Isis codebase.