PHPWord

About PHPWord

PHPWord is a library written in PHP that create word documents. Windows operating system is not required to work with it because the results are docx files (Office Open XML) that can be opened by all major office software.

In this tutorial, I will not describe all the basics instead ‘PHPWord template add table’. Assuming that you are already familiar with PHPWord and only describe how to add table row/cell on an existing template by coding. If you are a newbie, I suggest to visit PHPWord website.

Note: Though I took help from http://jeroen.is/phpword-templates-with-repeating-rows/ to write this post, I like open office xml (oox) technique given in http://officeopenxml.com/. I saw that oox is more powerful and reliable for coding for PHPWord. You should learn oox instead of this tutorial.

PHPWord template add table

When we load any template, we can set the value of any variable with setValue() function.

Unfortunately we can’t add table cell/row dynamically to any template. But you can do it using my techniques ‘PHPWord template add table’.

How it works:

1. Create a template Word document, containing the tables you would like to use.
   For each table, add one row to use as a template with the tags you would like to replace. Your template would be something like this:

FIRST NAME	LAST NAME
${first_name}	${last_name}

2. Call the cloneRow($variable, $numberOfRows) function before setValue() to duplicate the template row. Provide any variable on that row as $variable and the required number of rows as $numberOfRows. For example, calling cloneRow('first_name', 3) would transform the working copy of your template into something like this:

FIRST NAME	LAST NAME
${first_name#1}	${last_name#1}
${first_name#2}	${last_name#2}
${first_name#3}	${last_name#3}

3. Now call setValue($variable, $value) adding #rowNumber to the original tags.
   To finish the example:

$doc->setValue(‘first_name#1′, ‘Rejaul’);

$doc->setValue(‘last_name#1′, ‘Karim’);

$doc->setValue(‘first_name#2′, ‘Gumoti’);

$doc->setValue(‘last_name#2′, ‘dotcom’);

$doc->setValue(‘first_name#3′, ‘Bangla’);

$doc->setValue(‘last_name#3′, ‘desh’);

Would result in:

FIRST NAME	LAST NAME
Rejaul	Karim
Gumoti	dotcom
Bangla	desh

To get this thing working you’ll have to replace the Template.php file found in side the PHPWord directory by this one Template.php or add the function below by hand.

/**

* Clone a table row

*

* @param mixed $search

* @param mixed $numberOfClones

*/

public function cloneRow($search, $numberOfClones) {

if(substr($search, 0, 2) !== ‘${‘ && substr($search, -1) !== ‘}’) {

$search = ‘${‘.$search.’}';

}

$tagPos = strpos($this->_documentXML, $search);

$rowStartPos = strrpos($this->_documentXML, “_documentXML) – $tagPos) * -1));

$rowEndPos = strpos($this->_documentXML, “”, $tagPos) + 7;

$result = substr($this->_documentXML, 0, $rowStartPos);

$xmlRow = substr($this->_documentXML, $rowStartPos, ($rowEndPos – $rowStartPos));

for ($i = 1; $i <= $numberOfClones; $i++) {

$result .= preg_replace(‘/${(.*?)}/’,'${\1#’.$i.’}', $xmlRow);

}

$result .= substr($this->_documentXML, $rowEndPos);

$this->_documentXML = $result;

}

Note: Don’t try to use color for the table cells. I faced problem when tried to add color to the table header.

Any feedback is welcome!