Re: How can I read the .docx file in perl?

prabuvos:

Unzip it ... it's just a collection of XML files. Then you can dig through them with your favorite XML parser. For many documents, you'll need only the items in the word directory.

$ unzip hack.docx
Archive:  hack.docx
  inflating: [Content_Types].xml
  inflating: _rels/.rels
  inflating: word/_rels/document.xml.rels
  inflating: word/document.xml
  inflating: word/_rels/header2.xml.rels
  inflating: word/footer2.xml
  inflating: word/footer1.xml
  inflating: word/footer3.xml
  inflating: word/header2.xml
  inflating: word/header1.xml
  inflating: word/endnotes.xml
  inflating: word/footnotes.xml
  inflating: word/header3.xml
 extracting: word/media/image1.jpeg
  inflating: word/theme/theme1.xml
  inflating: word/_rels/settings.xml.rels
  inflating: word/settings.xml
  inflating: word/styles.xml
  inflating: word/webSettings.xml
  inflating: word/numbering.xml
  inflating: docProps/app.xml
  inflating: docProps/core.xml
  inflating: word/fontTable.xml
  inflating: docProps/custom.xml
[download]

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

Comment on Re: How can I read the .docx file in perl? Download Code

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Re^2: How can I read the .docx file in perl? by locked_user sundialsvc4 (Abbot) on Apr 17, 2013 at 13:35 UTC
In addition, Microsoft provides XML schemas, e.g. here, by which the contents of the file can be validated – also used in some forms of extraction. If you use an “industrial strength” package such as XML::LibXML, which is based on the industry-standard libxml2 library, you will get all the goodies that you need. IIRC, Microsoft was told a few years ago by several governments that a “closed” format was no longer acceptable for government documents ... a very sensible concern, of course. Of course, ODF is also an XML-based format. See http://oasis-open.org.

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Re^2: How can I read the .docx file in perl?
by locked_user sundialsvc4 (Abbot) on Apr 17, 2013 at 13:35 UTC

In addition, Microsoft provides XML schemas, e.g. here, by which the contents of the file can be validated – also used in some forms of extraction.

If you use an “industrial strength” package such as XML::LibXML, which is based on the industry-standard libxml2 library, you will get all the goodies that you need.

IIRC, Microsoft was told a few years ago by several governments that a “closed” format was no longer acceptable for government documents ... a very sensible concern, of course. Of course, ODF is also an XML-based format. See http://oasis-open.org.