Merge Block

In the context of the TX Text Control &#9584; TX Text Control .NET Server &#9584; DocumentServer Namespace &#9584; MailMerge Class The MailMerge class is a .NET component that can be used to effortlessly merge template documents with database content in .NET projects, such as ASP.NET web applications, web services or Windows services. " data-tippy-interactive="true" data-tippy-placement="bottom" data-tooltip-width="wide"

>Mail Merge class, a merge block is a feature that allows repeating data structures in documents to be handled during a mail merge operation.

A merge block represents a section of the document that is repeated for each data entry in a data source, such as a table or list. This is particularly useful when you want to merge multiple records into a single document, such as invoices, order lists or reports with multiple line items per document.

When the &#9584; TX Text Control .NET Server &#9584; DocumentServer Namespace &#9584; MailMerge Class The MailMerge class is a .NET component that can be used to effortlessly merge template documents with database content in .NET projects, such as ASP.NET web applications, web services or Windows services. " data-tippy-interactive="true" data-tippy-placement="bottom" data-tooltip-width="wide"

>Mail Merge class processes the document, the merge block is repeated for each row in the associated data source (e.g., a DataTable or JSON array).

DataSourceManager

The out-of-the-box TX Text Control interface can be used to insert merge fields and merge blocks, and available drop-down lists are automatically populated with available block names based on a loaded data source. However, if you want to create your own UI or programmatically add merge blocks to a template, this article shows how to use the &#9584; TX Text Control .NET Server &#9584; DocumentServer.DataSources Namespace &#9584; DataSourceManager Class The DataSourceManager class is designed for handling all existing kinds of data sources which can be used together with the MailMerge class. " data-tippy-interactive="true" data-tippy-placement="bottom" data-tooltip-width="wide"

>Data Source Manager to retrieve available merge blocks and their fields.

Getting Merge Blocks Names

This code demonstrates how to automate the process of inserting merge blocks into a document. It loads data from a JSON file, dynamically inserts merge blocks for tables into the JSON data, and then merges this data into the document. Finally, it saves the document as a PDF.

First, by loading a data source, in this case JSON, we need to create an instance of the DataSourceManager.

// Load JSON data from file string jsonData = File.ReadAllText("tabledata.json");

var dataSourceManager = new DataSourceManager(); dataSourceManager.LoadJson(jsonData); // Load JSON data The &#9584; TX Text Control .NET Server &#9584; DocumentServer.DataSources Namespace &#9584; DataSourceManager Class &#9584; PossibleMergeBlockTables Property Gets a DataTableInfoCollection of DataTableInfo objects representing the tables which can be used as merge blocks using the currently selected master table. " data-tippy-interactive="true" data-tippy-placement="bottom" data-tooltip-width="wide"

>Possible Merge Block Tables method returns a list of merge block names in a loaded data source. The following code snippet shows how to loop through the list of merge blocks:

foreach (var table in dataSourceManager.PossibleMergeBlockTables) { // table.TableName } All available column names for a specific merge block can be retrieved using the &#9584; TX Text Control .NET Server &#9584; DocumentServer.DataSources Namespace &#9584; DataTableInfo Class &#9584; Columns Property Gets a DataColumnInfoCollection representing the columns of this data table. " data-tippy-interactive="true" data-tippy-placement="bottom" data-tooltip-width="wide"

>Columns property. The following code snippet shows how to create a new &#9584; TX Text Control .NET Server &#9584; DocumentServer.DataSources Namespace &#9584; MergeBlockInfo Class The MergeBlockInfo class is used to insert a table or paragraph based repeating merge block into a TextControl instance using the DataSourceManager.InsertMergeBlock method. " data-tippy-interactive="true" data-tippy-placement="bottom" data-tooltip-width="wide"

>Merge Block Info object and how to set the column names:

// Create a new MergeBlockInfo object with the table name var mergeBlockInfo = new MergeBlockInfo(table.TableName) { ColumnNames = table.Columns.Select(c => c.ColumnName).ToList() }; Inserting Merge Blocks

Here is the full code that shows how to insert a merge block for each available block in a document and how to finally merge the template to create a PDF document.

using TXTextControl; using TXTextControl.DocumentServer.DataSources; using TXTextControl.DocumentServer;

using (var tx = new ServerTextControl()) { tx.Create();

// Load JSON data from file string jsonData = File.ReadAllText("tabledata.json");

var dataSourceManager = new DataSourceManager(); dataSourceManager.LoadJson(jsonData); // Load JSON data

// Add merge blocks for all tables foreach (var table in dataSourceManager.PossibleMergeBlockTables) { // Create a new MergeBlockInfo object with the table name var mergeBlockInfo = new MergeBlockInfo(table.TableName) { ColumnNames = table.Columns.Select(c => c.ColumnName).ToList() };

// Create a new MergeBlockSettings object with the block type and header flag var mergeBlockSettings = new MergeBlockSettings(BlockTemplateType.TableRow, true);

// Insert the merge block dataSourceManager.InsertMergeBlock(tx, mergeBlockInfo, mergeBlockSettings); }

new MailMerge { TextComponent = tx }.MergeJsonData(jsonData);

tx.Save("results.pdf", StreamType.AdobePDF); } When the document is merged, the merge block is repeated for each row in the data source. The resulting document is a PDF file that contains the merged data.

Conclusion

The &#9584; TX Text Control .NET Server &#9584; DocumentServer.DataSources Namespace &#9584; DataSourceManager Class The DataSourceManager class is designed for handling all existing kinds of data sources which can be used together with the MailMerge class. " data-tippy-interactive="true" data-tippy-placement="bottom" data-tooltip-width="wide"

>Data Source Manager class provides a simple way to retrieve merge block names and their fields from a data source. This allows you to programmatically insert merge blocks into a document and merge data from a data source into the document.

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