"replaceText" not working

[SachinAspenify]

Environment - node.js version v21.0.0
OS - Mac

The package is very useful. Thanks for open-sourcing it.

I am trying to use the software to generate PPTX file from a template file. The "ReplaceText" function is not working as expected.

I tried to debug the code. But could not find any method that gives me text in an element.

Please find attached sample code I am using for my testing.
agreement-ppt.zip

[singerla]

Hi! It is because ppt separates the text into three xml elements:

<a:p>
  <a:r>
    <a:rPr lang="de-DE" sz="2000" i="1" dirty="0">
      <a:solidFill>
        <a:schemeClr val="accent6"/>
      </a:solidFill>
    </a:rPr>
    <a:t>{ </a:t>
  </a:r>
  <a:r>
    <a:rPr lang="de-DE" sz="2000" i="1" dirty="0" err="1">
      <a:solidFill>
        <a:schemeClr val="accent6"/>
      </a:solidFill>
    </a:rPr>
    <a:t>CustomerName</a:t>
  </a:r>
  <a:r>
    <a:rPr lang="de-DE" sz="2000" i="1" dirty="0">
      <a:solidFill>
        <a:schemeClr val="accent6"/>
      </a:solidFill>
    </a:rPr>
  <a:t> }</a:t>
  </a:r>
  <a:endParaRPr lang="de-DE" dirty="0"/>
</a:p>

Altough there is isolateTaggedNodes() in /src/helper/text-replace-helper.ts to handle those cases, it didn't work in your case.

You can try a workaround:

• Cut out your {CustomerName} tag from textbox to clipboard.
• Paste it into a plaintext editor (e.g. notepad) to remove all (visible and invisible) formatting.
• Copy & paste {CustomerName} back to the textbox.

This will not make any visible difference, but join the xml elements.

This was first bubbling up in #73 .

Please let me know if this helps. Any help on isolateTaggedNodes() will be highly appreciated 😃

[singerla]

I see there is a difference: err="1" Could this be related to spell checking? I can remember some really weird situations in the past and finding a solution will make a happy man out of me 😆

[SachinAspenify]

I did try the solution you mentioned earlier. Somehow I did not work.

What I did now, is that I deleted the placehoder and re-added it to PPT. Now it worked fine. We can close the issue. Thanks for your help.

Is there a way, we view the ppt xml so that it is easy to debug.

[singerla]

You could try slide.modifyElement('testElementName', [XmlHelper.dump]);

I'm happy to help 😃

[SachinAspenify]

I identified the underlying issue. I utilized an existing PowerPoint (PPT) file as a template and included curly brackets around a placeholder string that was already present in the presentation. This unintentionally resulted in the creation of three distinct components ('{', 'placeholder string', '}'), as shown by you above. Consequently, the replaceText function did not function as expected.

It might be beneficial to include this information in a troubleshooting guide to help others avoid encountering a similar issue in the future.

[singerla]

Thanks a lot for your feedback. In my point of view, this is a bug, because your approach should work on all text elements. At the moment, I won't go deeper into this, because the workaround is very simple.

[singerla]

It could also help to disable spell checking for {{mytag}}. If ppt encounters an unknown word, it will split xml blocks and mark the unknown with an err="1" attribute.