DocumentBuilder 2.0.1

DocumentBuilder

DocumentBuilder is a library that uses the Builder pattern to enable you to declaratively create different kinds of documents easily. It is not a full-fledged solution for creating complex documents. DocumentBuilder focuses on ease of use.

The following formats are currently supported:

• Markdown
• HTML
• Excel

DocumentBuilder exposes a GenericDocumentBuilder class that can be used to create a markdown or HTML document, it does not support Excel since its document structure is too different. DocumentBuilder also exposes a MarkdownDocumentBuilder and an HTMLDocumentBuilder, this is done so that in the future, these can be extended with Markdown or HTML-specific elements. For now, it's recommended to use the generic GenericDocumentBuilder as it has the same functionality.

Table of Contents

• DocumentBuilder
• Table of Contents
  • Creating a document
    • Generic
    • Markdown
    • HTML
    • Excel
  • Tables
    • Creating a Table
      • 1. Define a POCO
      • 2. Put your POCOs in an IEnumerable
      • 3. Use it inside a document builder to generate a table
  • Options
  • DocumentOptions
  • Markdown
    • MarkdownTableOptions
  • HTML
    • HtmlDocumentOptions
    • Attributes
  • Credits
  • Future work

Creating a document

Below are examples of how you can use the document builders provided by DocumentBuilder to create markdown, HTML and Excel documents. You can write your document to a stream by providing an output stream, or to a file by providing a file path.

// Given the following data:
var header1 = "Header1";
var header2 = "Header2";
var header3 = "Header3";
var header4 = "Header4";
var paragraph = "An interesting paragraph";
var imageName = "imageName";
var imagePath = "./image";
var imageCaption = "This is an image";

var orderedList = new List<string>
{
    "an",
    "ordered",
    "list"
};

var unorderedList = new List<string>
{
    "an",
    "unordered",
    "list"
};

Generic

The generic document builder allows you to create generic documents that can easily be written to a stream as either Markdown or HTML.

// Create a document using the generic document builder
var outputStream = new MemoryStream();

var documentBuilder = new DocumentBuilder(options)
    .AddHeader1(header1)
    .AddHeader2(header2)
    .AddHeader3(header3)
    .AddHeader4(header4)
    .AddParagraph(paragraph)
    .AddImage(imageName, imagePath, imageCaption)
    .AddUnorderedList(unorderedList)
    .AddOrderedList(orderedList)
    .AddTable(productTableRows) // More on tables below
    .BuildAsync(outputStream, DocumentType.Markdown); // Or HTML (DocumentType.HTML)

Markdown

The MarkdownDocumentBuilder allows you to create Markdown documents, it is not yet different from the GenericDocumentBuilder, but might include Markdown-specific functionality in the future.

// Create a document using the markdown document builder
var outputStream = new MemoryStream();

var markdownDocumentBuilder = new MarkdownDocumentBuilder(options)
    .AddHeader1(header1)
    .AddHeader2(header2)
    .AddHeader3(header3)
    .AddHeader4(header4)
    .AddParagraph(paragraph)
    .AddImage(imageName, imagePath, imageCaption)
    .AddUnorderedList(unorderedList)
    .AddOrderedList(orderedList)
    .AddTable(productTableRows) // More on tables below
    .BuildAsync(outputStream); // Or file path

HTML

The HTMLDocumentBuilder allows you to create Markdown documents, it is not yet different from the GenericDocumentBuilder, but might include HTML-specific functionality in the future.

// Create a document using the html document builder
var outputStream = new MemoryStream();

var htmlDocumentBuilder = new HtmlDocumentBuilder(options)
    .AddHeader1(header1)
    .AddHeader2(header2)
    .AddHeader3(header3)
    .AddHeader4(header4)
    .AddImage(imageName, imagePath, imageCaption)
    .AddParagraph(paragraph)
    .AddUnorderedList(unorderedList)
    .AddOrderedList(orderedList)
    .AddTable(productTableRows) // More on tables below
    .BuildAsync(outputStream); // Or file path

Excel

The Excel document builder allows you to create Excel documents. Since the structure of Excel documents is not comparable to Markdown or HTML, it's not supported by the GenericDocumentBuilder.

// Create a document using the excel document builder
var outputStream = new MemoryStream();

var excelDocumentBuilder = new ExcelDocumentBuilder(options)
    .AddWorksheet("my-worksheet-name")
    .AddTable(productTableRows) // More on tables below
    .BuildAsync(outputStream);  // Or file path

Tables

DocumentBuilder supports the creation of tables by creating a POCO (Plain Old C# Object). It will use the name of the property as the column name and will order the columns as defined on the POCO. There are options available to configure this.

Creating a Table

1. Define a POCO

public class ProductTableRow
{
    public string Id { get; set; }
    public string Amount { get; set; }
    public string Price { get; set; }
    public string Description { get; set; }
}

2. Put your POCOs in an IEnumerable

var productTableRows = new List<ProductTableRow>
{
    productTableRowOne,
    productTableRowTwo,
    productTableRowThree,
};

3. Use it inside a document builder to generate a table

var outputStream = new MemoryStream();

var markdownDocumentBuilder = new MarkdownDocumentBuilder(options)
    .AddTable(productTableRows)
    .BuildAsync(outputStream);

NOTE: In case of using an object, the values written to the table cell will be the object's ToString() method.

If the provided table row is an empty enumerable, it will be skipped.

Options

DocumentOptions

All document types have the following options:

LineEndings: Environment, Windows, Linux EmptyEnumerableBehavior: SkipRender, Render, ThrowException

Markdown

MarkdownTableOptions

Formatting: AlignColumns, None Alignment: None, Left, Right, Center

HTML

HtmlDocumentOptions

IndentationTypes: Spaces, Tabs

Attributes

You can annotate your POCO properties with the Column attribute.

public class ProductTableRow
{
    [Column(name: "ProductId", order: 1)] // Overwrite the column name
    public string Id { get; set; }

    [Column(nameof(Description))] // Not specifying an order will default the value to int.Max
    public string Description { get; set; }

    public string Price { get; set; }

    [Column(alignment: Alignment.Center)] // Applies github style markdown to align the column
    public string Amount { get; set; }
}

You can annotate your POCO properties with the IgnoreColumn attribute. This will ignore the column when converting to a document.

public class ProductTableRow
{
    [Column(name: "ProductId", order: 1)] // Overwrite the column name
    public string Id { get; set; }

    [Column(nameof(Description))] // Not specifying an order will default the value to int.Max
    public string Description { get; set; }

    [IgnoreColumn]
    public string Price { get; set; }

    [Column(alignment: Alignment.Center)] // Applies github style markdown to align the column
    public string Amount { get; set; }
}

Credits

DocumentBuilder is made possible by the following projects:

• ClosedXML
• FluentAssertions
• NSubstitute

Future work

If there are any features that you would like to see implemented, please create an issue with the enhancement label on the Github Issues page. Note that I am working on this project in my free time, and might not have time to implement your request (or simply decline it since I don't see the added value for the project).

Currently, I'm still looking to implement the following (no deadline set):

• Raw insertions for Markdown and HTML
• Word support
• More insertables for Excel
• Better styling options for Excel