Insert sections with templates.

[mapa803]

Dear.
I am developing an application in PHP that uses a template and combine data from a MySQL table. Desire to generate as many pages as records throw the SQL query. I am using this library, I think your instance by calling the template, but I can not add to this an sectio, what alternatives can I use to achieve it?
Thank.

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[ivanlanin]

We can't do that right now. The closest available feature now is the cloneBlock method of template (see Sample_23_TemplateBlock.php). But I don't think you clone block with section break.

[cnpetrich]

Any update on this request? The ability to add Sections to a template would be helpful in so many ways. Being able to add TextRuns, ListItemRuns, Page Breaks, etc... would be a great addition. This library has been so helpful to so many. I feel that this would be icing on the cake. Anyone come up with a working solution?

[ddodz]

I'm also eager to know if there was progress on this

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs.
If this is still an issue for you, please try to help by debugging it further and sharing your results.
Thank you for your contributions.

[jamesgeldart]

I've had a not dissimilar issue, trying to insert a large block of HTML into a template. The combination of Html::addHtml and TemplateProcessor::setComplexValue should work, but it actually ends up creating nested <w:p> elements in the document which then don't show up. I also had the issue that there is no 'Section' element type in the Word2007 writer.

The solution was to patch the TemplateProcessor (below) to accept an alternative replacement element to 'w:r'. If you change it to 'w:p' it will replaced the entire paragraph block with the converted HTML, rather than just the text run. Also the patch will default the element type to Container if it doesn't exist.

My code to insert the HTML then is:

//create a new Section and convert the HTML to word format
$section = new Section($this->section_count());
Html::addHtml($section, $value);

//replace the key with the newly created section - replace the whole paragraph not just the text run	
$templateProcessor->setComplexValue($key, $section, 'w:p');

The patch for TemplateProcessor.php is:

--- a/vendor/phpoffice/phpword/src/PhpWord/TemplateProcessor.php
+++ b/vendor/phpoffice/phpword/src/PhpWord/TemplateProcessor.php
@@ -275,7 +275,7 @@ class TemplateProcessor
     /**
      * @param string $search
      */
-    public function setComplexValue($search, Element\AbstractElement $complexType): void
+    public function setComplexValue($search, Element\AbstractElement $complexType, $container = 'w:r'): void
     {
         $elementName = substr(get_class($complexType), strrpos(get_class($complexType), '\\') + 1);
         $objectClass = 'PhpOffice\\PhpWord\\Writer\\Word2007\\Element\\' . $elementName;
+        if(!class_exists($objectClass)) {
+            $objectClass = 'PhpOffice\\PhpWord\\Writer\\Word2007\\Element\\Container';
+        }

         $xmlWriter = new XMLWriter();
         /** @var \PhpOffice\PhpWord\Writer\Word2007\Element\AbstractElement $elementWriter */
         $elementWriter = new $objectClass($xmlWriter, $complexType, true);
         $elementWriter->write();
 
-        $where = $this->findContainingXmlBlockForMacro($search, 'p:r');
+        $where = $this->findContainingXmlBlockForMacro($search, $container);
 
         if ($where === false) {
             return;