Docx Replace

This gem allows you to generate .docx files in your rails or ruby app by embedding variables inside of a .docx template. This is purposefully meant to be simple and feature-light.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'docx_replace'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install docx_replace

Usage

Inside of a rails controller, your code might look something like this (although I would recommend extracting most of this into a separate class):

def user_report
  @user = User.find(params[:user_id])

  respond_to do |format|
    format.docx do
      # Initialize DocxReplace with your template
      doc = DocxReplace::Doc.new("#{Rails.root}/lib/docx_templates/my_template.docx", "#{Rails.root}/tmp")

      # Replace some variables. $var$ convention is used here, but not required.
      doc.replace("FIRSTNAME", @user.first_name)
      doc.replace("LASTNAME", @user.last_name)
      doc.replace("USERBIO", @user.bio)

      # Replace multiple occurrences
      doc.replace("BIRTHDATE", @user.birth_date, true)

      # Write the document back to a temporary file
      tmp_file = Tempfile.new('word_template', "#{Rails.root}/tmp")
      doc.commit(tmp_file.path)

      # Respond to the request by sending the temp file
      send_file tmp_file.path, filename: "user_#{@user.id}_report.docx", disposition: 'attachment'
    end
  end
end

Note: Word sometimes wraps characters in XML tags, causing the replacement to not work. I recommend not using any special characters in your variable names.

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request

Credits

Much of this code is based on an older gem called docxedit. This has a few more features, but is very sensitive to the formatting of the .docx template.