How to Build a Table from a DataTable

You can download the complete source code of the ImportTableFromDataTable sample here.

Often your application will pull data from a database and store it in the form of a DataTable. You may wish to easily insert this data into your document as a new table and quickly apply formatting to the whole table. Using Aspose.Words this task is very simple to achieve. The code presented within this article demonstrates how to do this.

Note that the preferred way of inserting data from a DataTable into a document table is by using Mail Merge with Regions . The technique presented in this article is only suggested if you are unable to create a suitable template before hand to merge data with, in other words if you require everything to happen programmatically.

The Solution

1. Create a new DocumentBuilder object on your Document.
2. Start a new table using DocumentBuilder.
3. If we want to insert the names of each of the columns from our DataTable as a header row then iterate through each data column and write the column names into a row in the table.
4. Iterate through each DataRow in the DataTable.
   1. Iterate through each object in the DataRow.
   2. Insert the object into the document using DocumentBuilder. The method used depends on the type of the object being inserted e.g DocumentBuilder.Writeln for text and DocumentBuilder.InsertImage for a byte array which represents an image.
   3. At the end of processing of the DataRow also end the row being created by the DocumentBuilder by using DocumentBuilder.EndRow.
5. Once all rows from the DataTable have been processed finish the table by calling DocumentBuilder.EndTable.
6. Finally we can set the desired table style using one of the appropriate table properties such as Table.StyleIdentifier to automatically apply formatting to the entire table.

The following data in our DataTable is used in this example:

The Code

The following code demonstrates how to achieve this in Aspose.Words. The ImportTableFromDataTable method accepts a DocumentBuilder object, the DataTable containing the data and a flag which specifies if the column heading from the DataTable are included at the top of the table. This method builds a table from these parameters using the builder’s current position and formatting. Provides a method to import data from the DataTable and insert it into a new table using the DocumentBuilder.

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-.NET
/// <summary>
/// Imports the content from the specified DataTable into a new Aspose.Words Table object. 
/// The table is inserted at the current position of the document builder and using the current builder's formatting if any is defined.
/// </summary>
public static Table ImportTableFromDataTable(DocumentBuilder builder, DataTable dataTable, bool importColumnHeadings)
{
    Table table = builder.StartTable();

    // Check if the names of the columns from the data source are to be included in a header row.
    if (importColumnHeadings)
    {
        // Store the original values of these properties before changing them.
        bool boldValue = builder.Font.Bold;
        ParagraphAlignment paragraphAlignmentValue = builder.ParagraphFormat.Alignment;

        // Format the heading row with the appropriate properties.
        builder.Font.Bold = true;
        builder.ParagraphFormat.Alignment = ParagraphAlignment.Center;

        // Create a new row and insert the name of each column into the first row of the table.
        foreach (DataColumn column in dataTable.Columns)
        {
            builder.InsertCell();
            builder.Writeln(column.ColumnName);
        }

        builder.EndRow();

        // Restore the original formatting.
        builder.Font.Bold = boldValue;
        builder.ParagraphFormat.Alignment = paragraphAlignmentValue;
    }

    foreach (DataRow dataRow in dataTable.Rows)
    {
        foreach (object item in dataRow.ItemArray)
        {
            // Insert a new cell for each object.
            builder.InsertCell();

            switch (item.GetType().Name)
            {
                case "DateTime":
                    // Define a custom format for dates and times.
                    DateTime dateTime = (DateTime)item;
                    builder.Write(dateTime.ToString("MMMM d, yyyy"));
                    break;
                default:
                    // By default any other item will be inserted as text.
                    builder.Write(item.ToString());
                    break;
            }

        }

        // After we insert all the data from the current record we can end the table row.
        builder.EndRow();
    }

    // We have finished inserting all the data from the DataTable, we can end the table.
    builder.EndTable();

    return table;
}

The method can then be easily called using your DocumentBuilder and data. Below code sample shows how to import the data from a DataTable and insert it into a new table in the document.

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-.NET
// The path to the documents directory.
string dataDir = RunExamples.GetDataDir_WorkingWithTables();

// Create a new document.
Document doc = new Document();

// We can position where we want the table to be inserted and also specify any extra formatting to be
// applied onto the table as well.
DocumentBuilder builder = new DocumentBuilder(doc);

// We want to rotate the page landscape as we expect a wide table.
doc.FirstSection.PageSetup.Orientation = Orientation.Landscape;

DataSet ds = new DataSet();
ds.ReadXml(dataDir + "Employees.xml");
// Retrieve the data from our data source which is stored as a DataTable.
DataTable dataTable = ds.Tables[0];

// Build a table in the document from the data contained in the DataTable.
Table table = ImportTableFromDataTable(builder, dataTable, true);

// We can apply a table style as a very quick way to apply formatting to the entire table.
table.StyleIdentifier = StyleIdentifier.MediumList2Accent1;
table.StyleOptions = TableStyleOptions.FirstRow | TableStyleOptions.RowBands | TableStyleOptions.LastColumn;

// For our table we want to remove the heading for the image column.
table.FirstRow.LastCell.RemoveAllChildren();

// Save the output document.
doc.Save(dataDir + "Table.FromDataTable Out.docx");