Create an memo document using MIME - lotus-notes

Is there any way to create a document (memo) using MIME?
We want to 'journalize' emails from Outlook 365 (I have managed to create an addin that can send MIME format to Domino via REST API), however I'm not sure how to convert it to a memo document.
So far the only helpful thing I found is this post: Importing EML files into Notes (lots of them). It makes similar transformation (EML to Doc), so I guess I can find needed part and re-use it.
But before I do that - are there any other ways that can do such transformation?
Thanks!

The LotusScript object model includes a NotesMIMEEntity class (MIMEEntity in Java) for creating MIME parts in a document. However, the LotusScript object model does not include a MIME parser. Stephan Wissel's example uses the mime4j library to parse MIME. Then he uses MIMEEntity to create each part. I think you will have to do something similar.
MimeMessageParser.java is another example that writes MIME to a Notes document. This class is part of the XPages Extension Library. It also uses the mime4j parser and MIMEEntity. It just uses a different approach to parsing. It might be useful to compare MimeMessageParser with Stephan's code.
By the way mime4j itself has been included in Domino since 9.x, but it is packaged as part of the OSGi framework. If you are implementing an OSGi plugin it's easy to add a dependency on the org.apache.james.mime4j bundle. If not OSGi, you may need to get your own mime4j jar (or find a different MIME library).

Related

XPages: Is there a way to copy/rename custom controls

In Lotuscript you can manipulate design elements - create them, change them, rename them, etc.
Are you able to do the same thing for Xpages and custom controls design elements?
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My question should have been clearer. What I want to accomplish is to copy an existing cc and give it a new name, programatically. The app will then close and reopen (or refresh or get rebuilt) so that the app can "see" the new cc. If I copy the cc it will only have one field on it. I will add custom code later. I could just create a new cc with no code in it, that would work too.
I am not familiar with the DXL exporter but I can research it. Using that can I just export the design of the cc to an XML file in a temp directory, use the transform to change the name, and then import the control?
I think the XPage or Custom Control design elements are probably under MISC_CODE or MISC_FORMAT design elements in a NoteCollection.
However, accessing that design element is the easy part. Doing a create / rename / change etc is a much bigger task.
Remember that the XPage or Custom Control XML file is only a starting point:
XPages and Custom Controls also have a .xsp.metadata file, as you'll see with source control.
Custom Controls will also have (and need) a .xsp-config file.
There are corresponding .java files for every XPage and Custom Control in the Local source folder. They're created by a builder based on parsing the XML. I don't think you'll be able to create those programmatically. I'm not sure of the impact of renaming them.
For Custom Controls, even if you can rename the .java file, it's referenced in the .java files of relevant XPages. Updating those is goiong to be a significant task.
The XPages runtime doesn't even use those .java files. Instead it uses the .class files in WebContent\WEB-INF (you need to use Project Explorer view and modify the filter to see those files). This is compiled byte code, so you won't be able to update the .class files for XPages containing renamed Custom Controls, as far as I know.
Even if you can rename the .class files, the XPages runtime almost certainly won't use them until either a Clean (which will overwrite anything you've done) or an HTTP restart. As far as I can tell they're cached.
Depending on your use cases, it's possible not all these points will be an issue, e.g. if you're modifying the XML files and building with headless designer.
I suspect this is why nothing was added to the NoteCollection object or a specific NotesXPage / NotesCustomControl API class added.
In Lotuscript you can manipulate design elements - create them, change them, rename them, etc.
This is only partially true. There is a LS API to create/alter views and outlines. Good luck with other design elements - although they're standard "notes", so you can access their items, in most cases you won't compile them and there will be some problems with signatures (real experience with TeamStudio CIAO).
Your question has two points of view - do you want to alter design elements in design process or alter running application?
To help a designer you can go the way of Eclipse extensions and enrich tools in IBM Designer to help developer. Something like TeamStudio Designer. In this case you need to look for source design elements, mentioned by Paul.
To enrich application you don't need to alter source design elements. IBM Designer transforms XML in source code to a Java code (JSF framework) - so you can generate your Java code from anything you wish. Take a look inside Local\xsp folder of NSF in Package explorer. You will find Java sources made from your XPages and Custom Controls. So if you don't need to work with design elements, go for Java components - they can be built on the fly.
And of course, there is always the option of DXL framework - so you can clone/alter design of the application through XML transformations. Good starting point: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ddwiki.nsf/dx/ls-design-programming.htm

Parsing Excel files in monotouch

Are there any good ways of parsing Excel files in monotouch? Seems like most methods to work with Excel is based on using the Excel Object Library. Doesn't seem like that's even an option in monotouch? I read that objective-c doesn't have any native support for Excel-files, so don't know if that would change anything?
You would need to either
write your own
find an obj-c library that does it and write MT bindings for it
find a open source .NET library and port it to MT
If all you want to do is display a file, you can use the existing iOS document APIs to do it.
The newest Office formats are XML based, so depending on how complex the files are, writing your own parser might be feasible to do.
I ended up just writing the middle step, a web service that fetches the Excel file, parses it and serves up the content as xml/json.

Flexible customization - Generating word document using C#

Problem - Generate a word document from information retrieved from database.
My solution - Create a word document template add fields/tags in places where values need to be inserted. The template will require tables and charts as well. Using document reflector that comes with open office xml sdk reflect on the document template and extract the w:document section and port it to C#. The rest of the logic revolves simply around finding the fields/tags, replacing them, etc. Very simple approach but not very flexible!
Challenge - I want the user to have the ability to customize the template or the generated document output. But this will not be possible if I embed the template logic in code.
Any other possibilities - I looked around at Templating using T4 and RazorEngine but could not find any concrete examples of how to create word documents using these two technologies.
Now what is the best approach?
I would really appreciate your inputs on what is the best and most flexible way to generate word documents using C#.
I'm actually working a project where the business users are designing word template with mail merge fields and we are populating the values using a 3rd party software package Aspose Words. http://www.aspose.com/categories/.net-components/aspose.words-for-.net/default.aspx
The software includes a library for merging data from datatables into the mail merge fields in the word document.
I also wrote a customized word task pane add in that retrieves data views from the database and lists the fields in a drag/drop interface that mimics a crystal or sql report writing interface.
Probably would of been easier to just use crystal or sql reporting though...
It's certainly possible to generate the contents of an Office doc using T4 or Razor and then package it up. The TestScribe powertool for Visual Studio Test Manager does just that with T4. There is a thread by Sally Cavanagh in the Q&A on this page http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/e79e4a0f-f670-47c2-9b8a-3b6f664bf4ae that suggests a way to look at the T4 templates that it uses, which might get you jump-started.
Here is sample to play word document template with C#
You could use a content control databinding approach.
XML Mapping Task Pane for Word 2007/2010 is an authoring tool.
To create an instance document, you just attach your XML data file.
If the resulting documents will be opened in Word, that is all that is required: Word will bind the data itself. If your consuming application is not Word, you might want to resolve the bindings yourself (eg via Open XML SDK).
Content control databinding isn't intended to support repeats and conditionals. For a way to do that, look at my OpenDoPE convention
Take a look at Templater. Disclamer: I'm the author.
Check out JODReports or Docmosis. They are Java based but some of the templating features and output options might be ideal. You can call the command line interfaces unless they also have something better to reach from C#.

How to generate application forms/documents programmatically?

At the moment, we use MS WORD and MS EXCEL to mail merge documents that needs to be sent to multiple recepients.
For example, say there is a complaint form where the complainant needs to fill in his/her name, address, etc. So we have a .doc file set up with the content and the dynamic entities set up for mail merging, with the name and address details put in an excel file, from where we can happily mail merge to generate all or just the necessary forms/documents.
However, I would like to automate this process, like a form in a website where the complainant can fill in his/her name, address and other details, and we could use that to generate the complaint form automatically and offer it to be downloaded (preferrably as a pdf).
Now, the only solution that comes to mind, is Latex, so that I can just replace the needed entities and just compile to PDF. However, that bit has to be negotiated with the webhost, if they are offering Latex or not.
Is there any other solution? Any other way we could get this done, with something that shouldn't be a problem for most webhosting solutions to offer?
EDIT: I would prefer a non .NET or rather non microsoft solution since, the servers are running linux and while mono might be capable of getting the job done, none of our devs know any .NET languages. However, if required we might have to dwelve into it.
Generating PDF using an XSL. Check the following: Apoc XSL-FO
You will need to create an XML file with the required fields and transform that with this tool.
If you wish to avoid .NET then XSL-FO is worth a look. Try the FOray project.
XSLT can be a steep learn if you do not have experience already. Also users will not be able to change the templates without asking the XSLT guru to do it.
If your templates are already in MS Word and MS Excel then I would stick with generating MS docs on the server. These are now easy to work with from code since OpenXML - check out OfficeOpenXML and OpenXMLDeveloper
Apache FOP : http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/
I suggest generating rtf on the server: it's easy enough to automatically generate using cpan's RTF::Writer, has converters generating good pdf, can be edited by hand in word, oo-writer & TextEdit, doesn't have any really bad compatibility issues between the main editing applications, and has decent text & resource extraction tools, with text extraction being rather better than pdf.
There's some support for moving between rtf & latex, although the best rtf -> latex converter, docx2tex, depends on the System.IO.Packaging .net module, whose mono implementation isn't yet rock solid.
Postscript — Not a recommendation: it's too much of an unwieldy sledgehammer for this job, but iText will generate the pdf directly from the form data. If you wanted to do fancy things like signed pdf, that would be the way to go.
Postscript #2 — If you break up the Word document into individual files using word's master document representation, then you can clobber one of the parts with hand-generated content. This makes it easy to do something approximating form-filling on word .doc files using just standard file-utils and some trivial rtf->doc tweaking.

Sharepoint. SPFile.OpenBinary() returns document with content type metadata

I have a method which downloads sharepoint documents to the local disk. I use SPFile.OpenBinary() method to get physical file, but it contains all fields of a parent DocumentLibrary. Does anybody know how to clear file (doc file) from these fields? I found only way to do it using Word interop library (method described here http://maxim-dikhtyaruk.blogspot.com/2009/05/trim-sharepoints-documents.html), but it doesn't fit my requirements cause it works only when Microsoft Office is installed on the machine...
You may want to read this to understand whats going on.
I do not know if this can be turned off or not, but it happens only with Word 2007 documents (docx).
You could do any of the following to turn this off:
Create a new content type and associate it with a document library. Use this document library from now on.
Look into some Open XML library or the Open XML SDK published by Microsoft.
This isn't a bug, it's supposed to be a feature! :-) Seriously though, you need to edit the Word document programmatically to remove these additional fields completely (I think even a content type will leave some behind).
For documents prior to Word 2007, you could use a toolkit like Aspose. I almost needed to do a similar thing once and would have used this product to do it. I'm sure there are other options out there.
For Word 2007 and higher, as SharePoint Newbie says, you should be able to use the Office Open XML formats to edit the document. Here's an MSDN intro article.

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