Apply Custom Formatting to Fields

Sometimes users need to apply custom formatting to fields. In this article, we will look at a couple of examples of how this can be done.

To learn more options, see the full list of properties for each field type in the corresponding class.

How to Apply Custom Formatting to Field Result

Aspose.Words provides API for custom formatting of field’s result. You can implement IFieldResultFormatter interface to control how the field result is formatted. You can apply numeric format switch, i.e. # “#.##”, date/time format switch, i.e. @ “dd.MM.yyyy”, and number format switch, i.e. * Ordinal.

The following code example shows how to apply custom formatting for the field result.

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-Java
DocumentBuilder builder = new DocumentBuilder();
Document document = builder.getDocument();
  
Field field = builder.insertField("=-1234567.89 \\# \"### ### ###.000\"", null);
document.getFieldOptions().setResultFormatter(new FieldResultFormatter("[%0$s]", null));
          
field.update();
document.save(dataDir+"FormatFieldResult_out.docx");

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-Java
public class FieldResultFormatter implements IFieldResultFormatter {

    private final String mNumberFormat;
    private final String mDateFormat;

    private final ArrayList mNumberFormatInvocations = new ArrayList();
    private final ArrayList mDateFormatInvocations = new ArrayList();

    public FieldResultFormatter(String numberFormat, String dateFormat) {
        mNumberFormat = numberFormat;
        mDateFormat = dateFormat;
    }

    public FieldResultFormatter() {
        mNumberFormat = null;
        mDateFormat = null;
    }

    public String format(String arg0, int arg1) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        return null;
    }

    public String format(double arg0, int arg1) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        return null;
    }

    public String formatNumeric(double value, String format) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub

        mNumberFormatInvocations.add(new Object[]{value, format});
        return (mNumberFormat.isEmpty() || mNumberFormat == null) ? null
                : String.format(mNumberFormat, value);
    }

    public String formatDateTime(Date value, String format, int calendarType) {
        mDateFormatInvocations
                .add(new Object[]{value, format, calendarType});

        return (mDateFormat.isEmpty() || mDateFormat == null) ? null : String
                .format(mDateFormat, value);
    }

How to evaluate IF condition

If you want to evaluate IF condition after mail merge, you can use the EvaluateCondition method that immediately returns the result of the expression evaluation.

The following code example shows how to use this method:

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-Java
DocumentBuilder builder = new DocumentBuilder();

FieldIf field = (FieldIf) builder.insertField("IF 1 = 1", null);
int actualResult = field.evaluateCondition();

System.out.println(actualResult);

How to Apply Custom Formatting to Time Field

By default Aspose.Words updates TIME field with current culture short time format. If you want to format the TIME field according to your requirement, you can achieve this by implementing IFieldUpdateCultureProvider interface.

The following code examples shows how to apply custom formatting to the TIME field:

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-Java
Document doc = new Document();
DocumentBuilder builder = new DocumentBuilder(doc);

builder.insertField(FieldType.FIELD_TIME, true);

doc.getFieldOptions().setFieldUpdateCultureSource(FieldUpdateCultureSource.FIELD_CODE);
doc.getFieldOptions().setFieldUpdateCultureProvider(new FieldUpdateCultureProvider());

doc.save(getArtifactsDir() + "WorkingWithFields.FieldUpdateCulture.pdf");

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-Java
private static class FieldUpdateCultureProvider implements IFieldUpdateCultureProvider
{
    public CultureInfo getCulture(String name, Field field)
    {
        switch (name)
        {
            case "ru-RU":
                CultureInfo culture = new CultureInfo(new Locale(name));
                DateTimeFormatInfo format = culture.getDateTimeFormat();

                format.setMonthNames(new String[]
                {
                    "месяц 1", "месяц 2", "месяц 3", "месяц 4", "месяц 5", "месяц 6", "месяц 7", "месяц 8",
                    "месяц 9", "месяц 10", "месяц 11", "месяц 12", ""
                });
                format.setMonthGenitiveNames(format.getMonthNames());
                format.setAbbreviatedMonthNames(new String[]
                {
                    "мес 1", "мес 2", "мес 3", "мес 4", "мес 5", "мес 6", "мес 7", "мес 8", "мес 9", "мес 10",
                    "мес 11", "мес 12", ""
                });
                format.setAbbreviatedMonthGenitiveNames(format.getAbbreviatedMonthNames());

                format.setDayNames(new String[]
                {
                    "день недели 7", "день недели 1", "день недели 2", "день недели 3", "день недели 4",
                    "день недели 5", "день недели 6"
                });
                format.setAbbreviatedDayNames(new String[]
                    { "день 7", "день 1", "день 2", "день 3", "день 4", "день 5", "день 6" });
                format.setShortestDayNames(new String[] { "д7", "д1", "д2", "д3", "д4", "д5", "д6" });

                format.setAMDesignator("До полудня");
                format.setPMDesignator("После полудня");

                final String PATTERN = "yyyy MM (MMMM) dd (dddd) hh:mm:ss tt";
                format.setLongDatePattern(PATTERN);
                format.setLongTimePattern(PATTERN);
                format.setShortDatePattern(PATTERN);
                format.setShortTimePattern(PATTERN);

                return culture;
            case "en-US":
                return new CultureInfo(new Locale(name));
            default:
                return null;
        }
    }
}