Build a Table from a DataTable
Often your application will pull data from a database and store it in the form of a DataTable. You can easily insert this data into your document as a new table and quickly apply formatting to the whole table.
Using Aspose.Words, you can easily retrieve data from a database and store it as a table:
- Create a new DocumentBuilder object on your Document.
- Start a new table using DocumentBuilder.
- If we want to insert the names of each of the columns from our DataTable as a header row then iterate through each data column and write the column names into a row in the table.
- Iterate through each DataRow in the DataTable:
- Iterate through each object in the DataRow.
- Insert the object into the document using DocumentBuilder. The method used depends on the type of the object being inserted e.g DocumentBuilder.Writeln for text and DocumentBuilder.InsertImage for a byte array which represents an image.
- At the end of processing of the DataRow also end the row being created by the DocumentBuilder by using DocumentBuilder.EndRow.
- Once all rows from the DataTable have been processed finish the table by calling DocumentBuilder.EndTable.
- Finally we can set the desired table style using one of the appropriate table properties such as Table.StyleIdentifier to automatically apply formatting to the entire table.
The ImportTableFromDataTable method accepts a DocumentBuilder object, the DataTable containing the data and a flag which specifies if the column heading from the DataTable are included at the top of the table. This method builds a table from these parameters using the builder’s current position and formatting. Provides a method to import data from the DataTable
and insert it into a new table using the DocumentBuilder.
The following data in our DataTable is used in this example:
The following code example shows how to execute the above algorithm in Aspose.Words:
// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-.NET.git. | |
/// <summary> | |
/// Imports the content from the specified DataTable into a new Aspose.Words Table object. | |
/// The table is inserted at the document builder's current position and using the current builder's formatting if any is defined. | |
/// </summary> | |
public Table ImportTableFromDataTable(DocumentBuilder builder, DataTable dataTable, | |
bool importColumnHeadings) | |
{ | |
Table table = builder.StartTable(); | |
// Check if the columns' names from the data source are to be included in a header row. | |
if (importColumnHeadings) | |
{ | |
// Store the original values of these properties before changing them. | |
bool boldValue = builder.Font.Bold; | |
ParagraphAlignment paragraphAlignmentValue = builder.ParagraphFormat.Alignment; | |
// Format the heading row with the appropriate properties. | |
builder.Font.Bold = true; | |
builder.ParagraphFormat.Alignment = ParagraphAlignment.Center; | |
// Create a new row and insert the name of each column into the first row of the table. | |
foreach (DataColumn column in dataTable.Columns) | |
{ | |
builder.InsertCell(); | |
builder.Writeln(column.ColumnName); | |
} | |
builder.EndRow(); | |
// Restore the original formatting. | |
builder.Font.Bold = boldValue; | |
builder.ParagraphFormat.Alignment = paragraphAlignmentValue; | |
} | |
foreach (DataRow dataRow in dataTable.Rows) | |
{ | |
foreach (object item in dataRow.ItemArray) | |
{ | |
// Insert a new cell for each object. | |
builder.InsertCell(); | |
switch (item.GetType().Name) | |
{ | |
case "DateTime": | |
// Define a custom format for dates and times. | |
DateTime dateTime = (DateTime) item; | |
builder.Write(dateTime.ToString("MMMM d, yyyy")); | |
break; | |
default: | |
// By default any other item will be inserted as text. | |
builder.Write(item.ToString()); | |
break; | |
} | |
} | |
// After we insert all the data from the current record, we can end the table row. | |
builder.EndRow(); | |
} | |
// We have finished inserting all the data from the DataTable, we can end the table. | |
builder.EndTable(); | |
return table; | |
} |
The method can then be easily called using your DocumentBuilder and data.
The following code example shows how to import the data from a DataTable
and insert it into a new table in the document:
// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-.NET.git. | |
Document doc = new Document(); | |
// We can position where we want the table to be inserted and specify any extra formatting to the table. | |
DocumentBuilder builder = new DocumentBuilder(doc); | |
// We want to rotate the page landscape as we expect a wide table. | |
doc.FirstSection.PageSetup.Orientation = Orientation.Landscape; | |
DataSet ds = new DataSet(); | |
ds.ReadXml(MyDir + "List of people.xml"); | |
// Retrieve the data from our data source, which is stored as a DataTable. | |
DataTable dataTable = ds.Tables[0]; | |
// Build a table in the document from the data contained in the DataTable. | |
Table table = ImportTableFromDataTable(builder, dataTable, true); | |
// We can apply a table style as a very quick way to apply formatting to the entire table. | |
table.StyleIdentifier = StyleIdentifier.MediumList2Accent1; | |
table.StyleOptions = TableStyleOptions.FirstRow | TableStyleOptions.RowBands | TableStyleOptions.LastColumn; | |
// For our table, we want to remove the heading for the image column. | |
table.FirstRow.LastCell.RemoveAllChildren(); | |
doc.Save(ArtifactsDir + "WorkingWithTables.BuildTableFromDataTable.docx"); |