OpenOffice.org BASIC Guide - OpenOffice.org wiki

The Structure of Text Documents
Paragraphs and Paragraph Portions
The core of a text document consists of a sequence of paragraphs. These are neither named nor indexed and there
is therefore no possible way of directly accessing individual paragraphs. The paragraphs can however be
sequentially traversed with the help of the Enumeration object described in Introduction to the API. This allows
the paragraphs to be edited.
When working with the Enumeration object, one special scenario should, however, be noted: it not only returns
paragraphs, but also tables (strictly speaking, in OpenOffice.org Writer, a table is a special type of paragraph).
Before accessing a returned object, you should therefore check whether the returned object supports the
com.sun.star.text.Paragraph service for paragraphs or the com.sun.star.text.TextTable service for tables.
The following example traverses the contents of a text document in a loop and uses a message in each instance to
inform the user whether the object in question is a paragraph or table.
Dim Doc As Object
Dim Enum As Object
Dim TextElement As Object
' Create document object
Doc = ThisComponent
' Create enumeration object
Enum = Doc.Text.createEnumeration
' loop over all text elements
While Enum.hasMoreElements
TextElement = Enum.nextElement
If TextElement.supportsService("com.sun.star.text.TextTable") Then
MsgBox "The current block contains a table."
End If
If TextElement.supportsService("com.sun.star.text.Paragraph") Then
MsgBox "The current block contains a paragraph."
End If
Wend
The example creates a Doc document object which references the current OpenOffice.org document. With the
aid of Doc, the example then creates an Enumeration object that traverses through the individual parts of the
text (paragraphs and tables) and assigns the current element to TextElement object. The example uses the
supportsService method to check whether the TextElement is a paragraph or a table.
Paragraphs
The com.sun.star.text.Paragraph service grants access to the content of a paragraph. The text in the paragraph can
be retrieved and modified using the String property:
Dim Doc As Object
Dim Enum As Object
Dim TextElement As Object
Doc = ThisComponent
Enum = Doc.Text.createEnumeration
While Enum.hasMoreElements
TextElement = Enum.nextElement
If TextElement.supportsService("com.sun.star.text.Paragraph") Then
TextElement.String = Replace(TextElement.String, "you", "U")
TextElement.String = Replace(TextElement.String, "too", "2")
TextElement.String = Replace(TextElement.String, "for", "4")
End If
Wend
The example opens the current text document and passes through it with the help of the Enumeration object. It
uses the TextElement.String property in all paragraphs to access the relevant paragraphs and replaces the
you, too and for strings with the U, 2 and 4 characters. The Replace function used for replacing does not
fall within the standard linguistic scope of OpenOffice.org Basic. This is an instance of the example function
70 OpenOffice.org 3.2 BASIC Guide · March 2010