Doc scripter

Scripted editing of Word documents with some examples providing a re-usable template for document automation. The motivation is to be able to create a template document in Word with defined formatting and then be able to programatically edit its content to produce new documents.

The provided example confirm_flatmate.py serves the purpose of generating "Wohnungsgeberbestätigung" - a form needed in Germany to confirm sub-lease a room in a shared flat.

Installation

• Prerequisities:
  • python 3.10 installed
• install with:

python3 -m pipenv sync

• alternativelly, install the package python-docx directly with: python3 -m pip install python-docx

Usage

• edit the configuration in config.json for your purpose

  python3 -m pipenv run confirm_flatmate.py <word_document_filename> <config_json_file>

• using the example:

  python3 -m pipenv run confirm_flatmate.py wohnungsgeber.docx config.json

How it works

• in the JSON configuration file, the necessary information of the tenant, main tenant and flat owner is mapped using various keywords
• the Word document is loaded and parsed using python-docx module
• the script looks for the keywords in the document to replace them with the values as defined in the config
• if the document uses tables, then the content inside can't be retrieved directly using Document.paragraphs but Document.tables and then the paragraphs. Note that every time formatting is changed (eveny inside one user-defined paragraph or one uninterrupted sentence), a new XML paragraph is created.
• new, modified, document is saved with the preposition modified_

Resources

• Documentation of python-docx module: https://python-docx.readthedocs.io/en/latest/