What's the best way to programmatically output a file in the format of a Word document in Ruby?

Question

I need to output a file in the format of a Word document from a Ruby-based web app (Rails/Sinatra) based on some textual content in the app. Is there library support in Ruby for creating and structuring a Word document?

Answer 1

Would it be easier to generate a Word 2003 document: Is there an easier to understand file format for a basic Word 2003 .doc that doesn't require a PhD in XML, etc?

Answer 2

Take a look at WordML, the XML format for Word files.

John Durant's blog has a useful list of WordML and FAQ resources

Walkthrough: Word 2007 XML Format

Useful tool for creating XSLT transforms: Office 2003 Tool: WordprocessingML Transform Inference Tool

These SO posts might also be of interest:

• Creating Word or XML document with VBA
• Generating WordML Reports Using Templates and XPath using ASP.Net
• Convert XHTML to Word ML
• XML to WordML using XSLT 1.0 - replace html tags within xml content with wordML formatting tags
• How can I convert convert docx or wordml xml files to xsl-fo?

Answer 3

You don't specify what "a Word document" means exactly. Is it a Word 2003-style doc file? Is it a Word 2007 docx file? Is it just something Word can open than supports styling?

If the latter is what you want, you could use RTF, which is somewhat easier than the doc format. There is a library called Ruby RTF that should do what you want, though I've honestly never used it myself.