Reading equations & formula from Word (Docx) to html and save database using java

Question

I have a word/docx file which has equations as under images

I want read data of file word/docx and save to my database and when need I can get data from database and show on my html page I used apache Poi for read data form docx file but It can't take equations Please help me!

Limy

SUGGESTIONS: 1) Try an alternate library, like OpenOffice, docxj4 or javadocx, and/or 2) Unzip your .docx and analyze the XML that's causing problems. For 2), be sure to post back what you've learned. – Mothball

I tried idea of Axel Richter and i resolved my issue. Thanks for your suggestions – Limy

Answer 1

Word *.docx files are ZIP archives containing XML files which are Office Open XML. The formulas contained in Word *.docx documents are Office MathML (OMML).

Unfortunately this XML format is not really well known outside Microsoft Office. So it is not directly usable in HTML for example. But fortunately it is XML and as such it is transformable using Transforming XML Data with XSLT. So we can transform that OMML into MathML for example, which is usable in a wider area of use cases.

A transformation process via XSLT mainly bases on a XSL definition of the transformation. Unfortunately creating a such is also not really easy. But fortunately Microsoft has done that already and if you have a current Microsoft Office installed, you can find this file OMML2MML.XSL in the Microsoft Office program directory in %ProgramFiles%\. If you don't find it, do a web research to get it.

So if we are knowing this all, we can getting the OMML from the XWPFDocument, transforming it into MathML and then saving that for later usage.

My example stores the found formulas as MathML in a ArrayList of strings. You should also be able storing this strings in your data base.

The example needs the full ooxml-schemas-1.3.jar as mentioned in https://poi.apache.org/faq.html#faq-N10025. This is because it uses CTOMath which is not shipped with the smaller poi-ooxml-schemas jar.

Word document:

Java code:

import java.io.*;
import org.apache.poi.xwpf.usermodel.*;

import org.openxmlformats.schemas.wordprocessingml.x2006.main.CTP;
import org.openxmlformats.schemas.officeDocument.x2006.math.CTOMath;
import org.openxmlformats.schemas.officeDocument.x2006.math.CTOMathPara;

import org.w3c.dom.Node;

import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;

import java.awt.Desktop;

import java.util.List;
import java.util.ArrayList;

/*
needs the full ooxml-schemas-1.3.jar as mentioned in https://poi.apache.org/faq.html#faq-N10025
*/

public class WordReadFormulas {

 static File stylesheet = new File("OMML2MML.XSL");
 static TransformerFactory tFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
 static StreamSource stylesource = new StreamSource(stylesheet); 

 static String getMathML(CTOMath ctomath) throws Exception {
  Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer(stylesource);

  Node node = ctomath.getDomNode();

  DOMSource source = new DOMSource(node);
  StringWriter stringwriter = new StringWriter();
  StreamResult result = new StreamResult(stringwriter);
  transformer.setOutputProperty("omit-xml-declaration", "yes");
  transformer.transform(source, result);

  String mathML = stringwriter.toString();
  stringwriter.close();

  //The native OMML2MML.XSL transforms OMML into MathML as XML having special name spaces.
  //We don't need this since we want using the MathML in HTML, not in XML.
  //So ideally we should changing the OMML2MML.XSL to not do so.
  //But to take this example as simple as possible, we are using replace to get rid of the XML specialities.
  mathML = mathML.replaceAll("xmlns:m=\"http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/math\"", "");
  mathML = mathML.replaceAll("xmlns:mml", "xmlns");
  mathML = mathML.replaceAll("mml:", "");

  return mathML;
 }

 public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    
  XWPFDocument document = new XWPFDocument(new FileInputStream("Formula.docx"));

  //storing the found MathML in a AllayList of strings
  List<String> mathMLList = new ArrayList<String>();

  //getting the formulas out of all body elements
  for (IBodyElement ibodyelement : document.getBodyElements()) {
   if (ibodyelement.getElementType().equals(BodyElementType.PARAGRAPH)) {
    XWPFParagraph paragraph = (XWPFParagraph)ibodyelement;
    for (CTOMath ctomath : paragraph.getCTP().getOMathList()) {
     mathMLList.add(getMathML(ctomath));
    }
    for (CTOMathPara ctomathpara : paragraph.getCTP().getOMathParaList()) {
     for (CTOMath ctomath : ctomathpara.getOMathList()) {
      mathMLList.add(getMathML(ctomath));
     }
    }
   } else if (ibodyelement.getElementType().equals(BodyElementType.TABLE)) {
    XWPFTable table = (XWPFTable)ibodyelement; 
    for (XWPFTableRow row : table.getRows()) {
     for (XWPFTableCell cell : row.getTableCells()) {
      for (XWPFParagraph paragraph : cell.getParagraphs()) {
       for (CTOMath ctomath : paragraph.getCTP().getOMathList()) {
        mathMLList.add(getMathML(ctomath));
       }
       for (CTOMathPara ctomathpara : paragraph.getCTP().getOMathParaList()) {
        for (CTOMath ctomath : ctomathpara.getOMathList()) {
         mathMLList.add(getMathML(ctomath));
        }
       }
      }
     }
    }
   }
  }

  document.close();

  //creating a sample HTML file 
  String encoding = "UTF-8";
  FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("result.html");
  OutputStreamWriter writer = new OutputStreamWriter(fos, encoding);
  writer.write("<!DOCTYPE html>\n");
  writer.write("<html lang=\"en\">");
  writer.write("<head>");
  writer.write("<meta charset=\"utf-8\"/>");

  //using MathJax for helping all browsers to interpret MathML
  writer.write("<script type=\"text/javascript\"");
  writer.write(" async src=\"https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mathjax/2.7.1/MathJax.js?config=MML_CHTML\"");
  writer.write(">");
  writer.write("</script>");

  writer.write("</head>");
  writer.write("<body>");
  writer.write("<p>Following formulas was found in Word document: </p>");

  int i = 1;
  for (String mathML : mathMLList) {
   writer.write("<p>Formula" + i++ + ":</p>");
   writer.write(mathML);
   writer.write("<p/>");
  }

  writer.write("</body>");
  writer.write("</html>");
  writer.close();

  Desktop.getDesktop().browse(new File("result.html").toURI());

 }
}

Result:

---

Just tested this code using apache poi 5.0.0 and it works. You need poi-ooxml-full-5.0.0.jar for apache poi 5.0.0. Please read https://poi.apache.org/help/faq.html#faq-N10025 for what ooxml libraries are needed for what apache poi version.

Cognoscenti

Hi @Axel Richter Now i want read all content from my docx. Such as the photo above I need to get the whole paragraph , Example: enter image description here i.sstatic.net/uFifn.png What should I do.Can you guide me? – Limy

@NHT: Yes, do that. Nobody stops you ;-). In serious: This is not how this Q/A site works. Do not ask a question, get an answer to it and then add additional requirements. This question has been answered already. If you have a new question, ask a new question. But in this new question show your own effort by showing what you have tried and where you are stuck. – Cognoscenti

@NHT: Yes it will be "really a bit difficult". But as a hint: The CTP extends org.apache.xmlbeans.XmlObject. So you could using a XmlCursor to go through the paragraph from top to down having access to all of its inner elements including the text runs and the oMath. – Cognoscenti

Answer 2

Adding to @Axel Richter answer, I found it really hard to find the required set of dependencies

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.poi</groupId>
            <artifactId>ooxml-schemas</artifactId>
            <version>1.4</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.poi</groupId>
            <artifactId>poi-ooxml</artifactId>
            <version>3.15</version>
        </dependency>

And with Office 2019 I guess they don't provide OMML2MML.XSL so here's the link for it https://github.com/Versal/word2markdown/blob/master/libs/omml2mml.xsl

Predilection